Jul 24

Jul 24 FILM REVIEW: "TOGETHER" IS A GOOD MATCH

There is a moment early on in any love where your fingers entwine like kite strings and tree limbs, and you feel as if you could fold, fully, into the arms of your other - but be forewarned, lovers and loners, that to slip beneath the skin of another is to wade within their blood and bone. Who knows what will become of yourself, having spent so long inside someone else…

Stumbling drearily into the next chapter of their long-winded relationship, absent lovers, Millie and Tim encounter a mysterious force which grafts their minds and flesh together with horrifying consequences.

Festering on the rancid corpse of a failing relationship with a side of cosmic horror, Together entwines terrifying visuals, dedicated performances, and masterful directing to deliver the year's best date-night film. It's ghoulish, gory, and utterly glorious.

Part The Thing, part The Seven Year Itch: Together is a sci-fi/comedy/horror/romance that juggles its genres seamlessly. Though it culminates in bone breaking and skin-shedding, Together enters with passive undertones and trivial arguments. Often scary, regularly funny, and sometimes heartfelt; it sharpens its teeth on the everyday anxieties found in relationships, romantic and otherwise, and finds itself underneath your skin long before the characters are unwillingly under one and other's. Boasting some truly terrifying visuals, freakish folklore, masterful practical effects, and a sinking feeling that things will only get worse before the final kiss: Together is a tour de force.

Flaying the flesh from his own relationship, writer/director Michael Shanks’ debuts with this exemplary tale of co-dependence gone cuckoo. Neatly paced, tightly wound, truly terrifying, and greatly benefitted by the off-screen/on-screen dynamic of its stars Alison Brie and Dave Franco - who tied the knot in 2017.

Brie (Glow, Community) and Franco (22 Jump Street, Now You See Me) are at their best; committing, body and soul, to each grotesque task as their characters inattentiveness turns intravenous. Warm to each other when they want; colder to each other than any couple would dare. Together is made whole by their brilliant performances.

Like a good date, Together is smart, entertaining, oftentimes hilarious, and doesn't overstay it's welcome. Wrap your arms through your lovers, nestle in with your first date, yearn for your ex from the back row, sit in-between two situationships vying for your affection, and treat yourself, and those you hold dear, to this diabolically delightful film.