Together

The body horror genre has a capacity to amuse me like few other film types do, and it was underlined so super clearly (with Penol 7000) with last year's hit The Substance (Demi Moore). I loved that film. I've seen it three times now and laugh just as hard each time at the absurdity that the film portrays. Together falls into the same category, but also manages to mix in a rather ordinary dash of romantic comedy, which is a genre mix that debut director Michael Shanks succeeds well with.

Weird. Fun. Nutty. Gooey. Bloody. Brutal. Dark. Funny... Together is all of those things.

Tim and Millie flee the city at the beginning of the film. Their hip farewell party includes New York-damaged insiders who think they are ruining their lives by buying a house in the countryside, but after Tim's parents die, they need a fresh start - to get away from the crowds, stress and hustle and bustle of the big city. Once out in the countryside, they both have some difficulty adjusting, and after falling into a mysterious hole where they are forced to spend the night, lots of really weird things start happening in their semi-chaotic lives.

A peaceful and non-threatening everyday life turns into a complete nightmare when Tim and Millie's bodies start wanting to meet, regardless of the situation. They want to merge with each other to become one, and this is where the basic idea comes into play, in the ancient Greek philosopher Plato's theory that we all fundamentally share cells with another human being (out of eight billion) and that once we manage to find this 'soul mate,' we should return to sharing one body, one heart, and one brain. - Something that manifests itself in plenty of gory scenes involving tiger saws, screams, blood and broken bones.

The amount of gore, blood and sawn flesh should have been increased by 300%, I think, to really create that real body horror atmosphere that especially The Substance offered.

Together is funny. Several times during the film, I laughed out loud just as I did during The Substance, and in addition to the bizarre body horror elements, the relationship comedy and romance between Tim and Millie also works well. This is largely thanks to a well-crafted script that avoids the genre's most tired tropes, and thanks to Dave Franco and Alison Brie, who are married in real life and therefore have a rare, tight and natural chemistry. Brie tends to feel a bit one-dimensional in her portrayals, in my opinion (in general), even though her presence is always strong and her delivery believable. Franco, on the other hand, often comes across as flat, and his emotions are almost always conveyed through the same type of irritation, but here they both work very well and, in the way they change because of the curse itself and towards each other, are never as genre-typical and predictable as they usually are.

The Substance remains the better film in the body horror genre from recent years, but Together is worth watching and at times captivatingly original, and the ending is hysterically funny in every conceivable way.