Friends, Spooktober is a lifestyle, and, as we’ve mentioned on the podcast many times, we are busy people. But as the weather begins to cool (for some people), the leaves begin to change, and the pumpkin-flavored treats begin to appear on store shelves, it’s time for Emily, Mary, and Kelli to see some horror movies. Here’s our conversation about Together, directed by Michael Shanks.
Mary: This movie messed me up so bad. There’s a lot of genuinely scary imagery (to me – horror is subjective), but Together is also psychological in a way that makes me uncomfortable. Again, horror is super subjective, and I get that. Can we talk about some of the relationship turmoil/psychological aspects of the film that are upsetting?
Emily: Yeah, I will say, first of all, I think the casting is doing a lot of work in this movie. Dave Franco and Alison Brie are a famous IRL couple and they’re famously freaks, so I think that is going to adjust viewer expectations going into this movie. In terms of how they are in the movie as characters, it was psychologically upsetting to me because I’m predisposed to being obsessed with Alison Brie and everything she does (I am in love with her). And I have often said that Dave Franco is super lucky to be with Alison Brie because even though he seems very nice, she is way out of his league.
Kelli: I do think they must have been playing with the public perception of Brie & Franco as a couple. It seems like they were pretty involved in the development process, and I would be surprised if their dynamic together wasn’t influential on the way the characters were written. Emily, I don’t think you’re alone in thinking that Dave Franco is lucky to be with Alison Brie — based on all of the interviews they do, it seems like Dave Franco also very much agrees with that. The main thing I think of when I think of him is “oh, he’s obsessed with his wife.” (Which, to be clear, I love that for both of them and they seem like a wonderful couple.)
Mary: I’m reaaaaal out of the loop with celebrity stuff, and I honestly didn’t know they were a couple before the promotional tour for this movie? But now I want to know how they’re freaks, and I’ll have to do some research.
Emily: So yeah, for those of us who know they are a couple IRL, I think we bring that bias into it. But in the movie, Millie (Alison Brie) acts like she knows she’s too good for Tim (Dave Franco), which is really off-putting and upsetting. She is really, really mean to him for a lot of the movie. There were a few points that were huge deal-breakers for me in terms of Millie’s behavior. First of all, she brings up his childhood trauma to make him feel bad. Secondly, she has sex with him in a bathroom stall at the elementary school and then gets mad at him for “making her” do it. Bananas.
Together (2025)
Mary: WOOF – Millie using his trauma to do a sick burn was devastating. If your partner said that to you, you’d feel absolutely terrible. For me, I’d have to say bye. Because how inhumane is it to bring up one of the most traumatic events of your life, then compare you to the most horrific part of that incident?
Kelli: Not to mention the fact that what he is going through is extra scary for him because of the implications (his mom lost her mind, he feels like he is losing his mind).
Emily: At the end of the day, I felt so confused because I want to always side with the woman (especially Alison Brie), but here I was thinking about how terrible she was and siding with A MAN (and a Franco at that).
Mary: I also hate to side with a man, but there I was.
Kelli: There’s a scene at the beginning of the movie where Millie’s brother tells Tim that when he dies, he doesn’t want “someone else’s life flashing before his eyes,” implying that Tim is essentially living in Millie’s shadow. He’s moving to the middle of nowhere for her, giving up on his dreams of touring, being absorbed into her family since he no longer has one. A horror movie about co-dependency could’ve focused on a couple who are actively choosing to be co-dependent (wanting only to spend time with each other, incapable of having lives outside of one another), but in this case it’s more like Millie is subsuming Tim. He actually seems pretty uncertain of whether he even wants to be in this relationship when the movie starts — when she asks if he’s sure he wants to do this, he’s like, ‘well, it’s a little late now to change my mind.’
I thought these performances were both so good, and part of that is obviously them having chemistry as people who’ve been married for a decade, but I think they’re also leaning into what has to be an uncomfortable thing to explore given the way their real life relationship exists in the public sphere.
Kelli: Another thing that hit close to home in terms of the relationship anxiety/horror here is the way Millie reacts when Tim appears to be going through a mental health crisis. Instead of being loving and supportive she seems almost… grossed out by him?
Mary: Soooo this is one of my personal worst fears, and probably what made me so uncomfortable about the film. I’ll say right now that I really liked this movie, and thought it was well made and saying something interesting. I don’t really want to see it ever again, though, because it truly freaked me out by playing on some of my own horror fears – primarily a partner being dismissive of mental health and body horror.
Millie seems grossed out by Tim, or disappointed in him? Mad at him? For clearly having a mental breakdown. For the viewer, it’s obvious that Tim drank that nasty cave water and is now physically drawn to merge with Millie, but for Millie… she could be thinking a lot of things. Minimum, Tim is having panic episodes and yearning to continue his music career, which Millie seems wholly unsupportive of.
To be completely honest, it’s irritating that Millie made them move to begin with so, what? She could teach at a smaller school? Like, girl what?
Emily: Yeah, Millie just does not seem like a very supportive partner, which was hard to see. It didn’t seem like she really respected any of Tim’s goals or what he contributed to the relationship. I’m thinking about that conversation they have when the neighbor comes over. Millie explains that Tim does all the cooking because she doesn’t know how to cook. She doesn’t put any sort of value judgment on that. But then she talks about how Tim doesn’t know how to drive and it’s like Tim is a bad person or a failure as a human being because she does all the driving and he can’t drive.
It also felt very symbolic that he was literally trapped in this place and only she could get him out because they’ve moved to a place where you very much have to drive to get anywhere.
Mary: And the fact that Tim is just a part of Millie’s life (instead of being a more active/equal partner) makes even more sense when they start to merge. You can look at it as them combining, or you could alternately look at it as Millie absorbing Tim. They become something new together, maybe, or perhaps Millie’s still the one in control.
Emily: Okay, so let’s talk about the physical merging that happens here. For those of you reading who have not seen this movie, Mille and Tim go out on a hike and get lost. And as Mary mentioned earlier, they fall into a cave and Tim decides it’s a good idea to drink nasty cave water. The next morning, they wake up and their legs are “glued” together somehow.
Mary: I want to add that Tim very stupidly says that them merging together in the cave was “mildew.” Lol
You drinking water from this cave? ; Together (2025)
Emily: Lol, right! Anyway, they are able to pull themselves apart, but it’s all downhill from there. Tim keeps falling into this trance-like state where he feels drawn to Millie. One night, Millie wakes up and he’s eating her hair. Tim shows up at her school when he’s supposed to be going to the city to play a show. Etc.
Then Alison Brie goes over to their neighbor/her coworker’s house (his name is Jamie and he’s played by Damon Herriman), and he gives her a glass of water. And now suddenly, she’s drawn to Tim as well.
Kelli: Okay, well I fully thought that the reason she started being drawn to Tim was because he came inside her (in the elementary school bathroom) and his semen had the cave juice in it. Thank you for pointing out the glass of water. Anyway.
Mary: Kelli I 100% thought this too. Let us know what you thought in the comments.
Emily: Okay, well, it was the water. I don’t know what to tell you.
Anyway. There’s a really hilarious scene where they’re being pulled to each other in the middle of the night and they both frantically start snorting Valium (it’s called Diazepam now), but you really should see the movie for all the details, folks. What you need to know is they want to squish into one person. And (spoiler) eventually they do. I don’t know… even though I hated Millie for most of the movie, I kind of thought the ending was romantic? How do you guys feel about it?
Kelli: Yeah, that was how I felt too. I think Millie also comes around in the end—or basically as soon as they start merging and she realizes that he is not, in fact, crazy, she gets better at being a partner to him. Which is kind of fucked up if you think about it too much, but oh well.
Mary: I thought it was kind of romantic too. Existentially scary, but romantic. Tim is willing to kill himself in order to save Millie and allow her to have a normal life, but he’s also willing to lose his identity in order to save her when he discovers that she has a fatal wound from her encounter with Jamie. In the end, no matter what Millie did or how they both behaved, Tim is willing to sacrifice everything in order to still be with her. That is romantic, but also… scary to be one person.
Kelli: And in keeping with the overall dynamic of their relationship.
Mary: I will say that the person they merged into (Tillie?Mim?) was androgynously hot. Incredibly, the final shot was just really, really good special effects. The director praised the team of animators who pulled off the Franco/Brie merge in a Gizmodo article recently, and I’m really pleased they didn’t just default to AI for that final shot.
Kelli: Lowkey I hated it but mostly just because it was unsettling. I kind of wished they would have put out a casting call for people who look like a hybrid of Alison Brie and Dave Franco but I guess that would have been a movie spoiler lol. Also like, did they warn her parents beforehand? Much to consider.
How did you guys feel about the cult storyline?
Emily: I could take it or leave it. I feel like a lot of movie goers really want to know how something works and/or why something happened. To me, symbolically, the act of merging as a metaphor for codependency made sense without needing a more concrete explanation. But I feel like a lot of people would be big mad without the whole cult back story there to explain the merging.
Mary: I didn’t need to know WHY their bodies wanted to merge, but I wanted more of the cult storyline, just because the concept of wanting to merge with someone and become something new is so wild. I don’t know why anyone would want that. Plus, it seems like the fusion isn’t necessarily permanent? When Millie hits Jamie, who has fused with his partner, they split apart briefly, which is disturbing in its own way. If you went to so much trouble to merge bodies, splitting apart would probably be equally horrifying to you.
That said, I think the cult storyline was a little wedged in there? How did they discover this was even a thing they could do? Did the church really cave in or was that part of something bigger? Where are the other cult members? It sort of just opens up more questions than anything else.
Emily: That’s true. I guess the cult storyline really adds more questions than it does answer them. And it still doesn’t explain the properties of the water or how they discovered it in the first place.
Kelli: Yeah, I agree with both of you, though I think I land more on the side of feeling like it could just be gone. I would have been fine with it if there was just something weird going on and we never really got an answer, partially because I felt like whatever was going on with the cult was a different movie. Bringing in the neighbor and this stuff with the missing couple in the town just felt like it was pulling away from the stifling nature of their relationship alone in this house. Also, I always wonder how the villain of a movie decides when to go full tilt evil. Like, when Millie goes to the house and he’s waiting in the basement watching the cult marriage video… was he just like “today is the day”??
Emily: Totally. I think you hit on the issue. This movie didn’t need a villain. The true enemy was within themselves all along. Or maybe the enemy is water. Hard to say.
Mary: As a final thought, I liked that Together, as a whole, didn’t take itself TOO seriously. I don’t think this is a comedy by any means, and I spent more time cringing and peeking through my fingers than laughing, but it does have funny moments. The final scene is a great reflection of that (I won’t go into detail, but y’all know in this house we are Spice Girls fans). I’m still thinking about this movie a week later, which is always a good thing – even in the case of Skinamarink.
Emily: I don’t know why we need to bring Skinamarink into this (I still think that was just a nothing of a movie, and unlike Mary, I haven’t thought about it since we wrote about it). But I agree, I appreciate that Together was legitimately funny. I laughed out loud multiple times. And the Spice Girls needle drop was just the icing on the cake. I had to rate this movie five stars.
Kelli: I didn’t see Skinamarink because I love myself. But yeah, this movie was actually really funny to me. There is one scene when she’s over at the neighbor’s house and the camera suddenly shifts to Tim creepily standing outside in a way that is so jarring and hilarious that my whole theater laughed. It was fun to watch with a crowd. Was Skinamarink fun to watch with a crowd? I DOUBT IT.
Mary: Okay, Skinamarink hasn’t been on my mind a lot lately, and it definitely wasn’t fun to watch with a crowd, but it does stick out as something I remember, and I think I’ll remember Together in a similar way. I don’t know that I really need to see it again, but I really enjoyed it and will remember this bonkers plot for a long time! I am giving it 4 stars.
Kelli: I’ve been behind on ratings but I think I’ll also give this one 4 stars. It’s not perfect but I enjoyed it!
Me (Mary) at the end of the movie ; Together (2025)