Together is a 2025 supernaturalbody horror film written and directed by Michael Shanks, in his directorial debut. The film stars real-life married actors Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a couple who move to the countryside and find themselves encountering a mysterious force that causes horrific changes in their bodies.
Together premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2025, and was released in the United States by Neon on July 30, 2025, and in Australia by Kismet Movies on July 31. It received positive reviews from critics and has grossed $28.2 million worldwide.
Plot
In a prologue, a search party combs through the woods, calling out the names of two missing people. Two search dogs end up in a strange underground cave, where they drink from a pool of water. Soon after, the dogs display strange behavior, seemingly transfixed by each other. The search concludes. Later that night, the dogs’ owner is disturbed by a commotion in the kennel — the sound of the dogs whining and shaking. As he approaches, he shines his flashlight into the cage and sees that the two dogs are horrifically fusing together.
Millie Wilson gets a job teaching elementary school English and moves to the countryside with her longtime boyfriend, aspiring musician Tim Brassington, who has been emotionally distant since the recent passing of his parents. Shortly before the move, Millie proposes to Tim at a going-away party held by their friends but he hesitates to respond, embarrassing her.
While hiking near their new home, they fall into the cave from the prologue during a rainstorm and decide to camp inside for the night. They find the same pool of water from which the dogs in the prologue drank; Tim drinks from the pool but Millie refuses, then Tim recalls traumatic details of the night he found his mother in bed with his father's decaying corpse. Upon waking up the next morning, Tim and Millie find their legs partially stuck together but dismiss the incident after separating. Tim begins to experience episodes where he is inexplicably physically drawn to Millie, confusing and frustrating them both. Tim visits a doctor, who dismisses his symptoms as panic attacks and prescribes him muscle relaxant pills before mentioning that a local couple, Simon and Keri, recently went missing. Millie's coworker Jamie McCabe shows up at their home to welcome them to the neighborhood, and she invites him in for dinner. The couple recounts their experience at the cave, which Jamie explains was a New Age church before it caved in.
Millie drops Tim off at the train station for a gig, but Tim experiences another episode and drags himself to Millie's workplace. An outraged Millie confronts him in a bathroom stall, whereupon they have sex, after which their genitals become stuck together. After they painfully force themselves to separate, Jamie spots them. Millie later visits Jamie's house to apologize and Jamie offers her some water, which she drinks. In the ensuing conversation, she begins to open up about some of the problems she and Tim have been facing in their relationship. Jamie relates Aristophanes' theory of the nature and origin of eros and encourages her not to let go of her "other half", then reminisces on his relationship with his seemingly deceased husband. Millie abruptly leaves after spotting a disoriented Tim outside.
Using exif data from their social media photos, Tim discovers that Simon and Keri visited the same cave he and Millie fell into after noticing the same symbols surrounding the cave, and unsuccessfully tries to convince Millie that the two of them may suffer whatever fate Simon and Keri did. That night, both Tim and Millie are supernaturally drawn together, causing their bodies to contort in unnatural ways until their arms become fused (it can be assumed that the water given to Millie by Jamie is from the pool in the cave, explaining why Millie is now also affected). They manage to prevent further fusion after consuming Tim's pills in a panic before passing out. Tim awakens tied to a chair, where Millie saws through their fused limb. Millie decides to drive them to the hospital, but realizes she has left her keys at Jamie's house. Tim promises to wait for her while she retrieves them, but secretly returns to the cave and finds Simon and Keri partially fused together as a grotesque humanoid with the Simon half having been stabbed in the neck.
Millie enters Jamie's house and finds a TV playing the wedding tape of two men she does not recognize, then a video depicting a ritual in which the men fuse together. Jamie, revealed to be the result of said fusion, promises that they are happier after "becoming whole" and implores Millie to complete the fusion process with Tim. When she resists, he cuts her arm the same way his constituents had their arms cut in the tape before she escapes.
Millie reunites with Tim in their driveway. He mentions the creature he saw in the cave, deducing that it was a result of both parties resisting the fusion process, resulting in the Simon half having been killed mid-fusion, and proclaiming he does not want to end up like them. He prepares to commit suicide by slitting his throat to save Millie, despite her pleading with him not to. Her wound from Jamie nearly causes her to fatally bleed out, but Tim saves her by fusing his arm to her wound. Accepting their fate, the two affirm their mutual love and slow dance to "2 Become 1", embracing as they fuse into a singular being.
That weekend, Millie's parents arrive for a visit. They knock on the door — now adorned with the symbol from the cave — and are greeted by a seemingly normal, androgynous person, suggesting that Millie and Tim had completed the fusion process.
In February 2024, Dave Franco and Alison Brie joined the cast of the film, with Michael Shanks directing from a screenplay he wrote.[5]30West, Tango Entertainment and Picturestart produced and financed the film.[6]
Filming
Though the film is set in Washington state,[7][8] principal photography took place in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.[9] The film was shot in 21 days.[10] Shanks's partner, who worked for a sex toy company, supplied free lifelike prop genitalia for use in a scene in which Brie and Franco's genitalia are stuck together.[10] For a section of the movie Brie and Franco wore a prosthetic that effectively conjoined their arms together for hours on end, resulting in the couple having to use the restroom together.[10]
The conjoining effects involved both prosthetics built by designer Larry Van Duynhoven and computer-generated imagery provided by Framestore. To create the merged version of Tim and Millie who the crew nicknamed "Tillie", effects supervisor Genevieve Camilleri went doing composites of Brie and Franco on Nuke to unveil a face that could be identified as an amalgation of the couple. With that as reference, Brie was filmed wearing a wig, a make-up recreation of Franco's eyebrows, and brown contacts. Afterwards Franco with motion tracking dots in his face was filmed on the same location, and his jaw and lips were digitally composited onto Brie's face.[11]
Music
The film score was conceived by Australian composer Cornel Wilczek, and was released on August 1, 2025, through Lakeshore Records.[12] In an interview, Wilczek explained that the score is "built around their romance" while further stating, "If you strip it all back, the main theme is basically a soppy love song. That became the raw material I bent, stretched, distorted, and reshaped throughout the film—mirroring those physical transformations. You've got elements courting each other, circling, slowly converging. There's a playfulness, but also tension and release. The music evolves alongside them."[13] Additional songs featured in the film include "2 Become 1" by Spice Girls, "Another One" by Golden Suits, and "Happy Together" by The Turtles.[14]
Track listing
No.
Title
Length
1.
"The Missing Hikers"
2:47
2.
"Rat King"
1:34
3.
"The Ultimate Intimacy in Divine Flesh"
2:37
4.
"Mildew or Something? – Cornel Wilczek & Alex Olijnyk"
2:01
5.
"A Fing Three-Legged-Race – Cornel Wilczek & Alex Olijnyk"
2:07
6.
"Dumb City-Folk Who Went Against Nature and Lost"
3:23
7.
"A Great Thirst – Cornel Wilczek & Alex Olijnyk"
1:51
8.
"23 Likes – Cornel Wilczek & Alex Olijnyk"
1:50
9.
"Together with Tim"
0:57
10.
"Thirsty All Over, A Love Song – Cornel Wilczek & Alex Olijnyk"
1:59
11.
"It Was Like a Window Opened Between Our House and That Night"
1:05
12.
"The Beginning of Something Wonderful! – Cornel Wilczek & Alex Olijnyk"
2:57
13.
"It Feels…Crowded"
1:53
14.
"I JUST SAW’D THROUGH OUR FUING ARMS!"
3:13
15.
"MUSCLE RELAXANT!"
3:44
16.
"By the Way, I’m Sorry I Didn’t Believe You, You Were Right, Obviously – Cornel Wilczek & Alex Olijnyk"
The film premiered in the Midnight section of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2025.[15] Positive word-of-mouth following its premiere sparked much interest among companies including A24, Neon, Apple TV+, Focus Features, Searchlight Pictures, Mubi, and Amazon MGM Studios.[16][17] Neon subsequently acquired worldwide distribution rights to the film for $17 million, the first major sale at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It had its international premiere on the opening night of the Sydney Film Festival on June 4, 2025, also screening in the Official Competition section of the festival on June 7 and 8.[18]
Together was scheduled for a theatrical release in the United States on August 1, 2025.[19][20] It was later moved up by two days to release on July 30.[21] The film was released in Australia by Kismet Movies on July 31.[22]
Home media
Together was released on digital platforms on August 26, 2025.[23]
Reception
Box office
As of August31,2025[update], Together has grossed $21.2million in the United States and Canada, and $7million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $28.2million.[3][4]
In the United States and Canada, Together was released alongside The Bad Guys 2 and The Naked Gun, and was projected to gross $7.5–10 million in its opening weekend.[24] It went on to debut to $10.9 million, finishing sixth at the box office.[25]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of 219 critics' reviews are positive.The website's consensus reads: "Given an extra sinew of authenticity by the metatextual casting of Alison Brie and Dave Franco at the top of their game, Together is a body horror that's as emotionally sticky as it is memorably gnarly."[26]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 75 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[27] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.[28]
The Globe and Mail's Barry Hertz gave a positive review and wrote, "It is the most potent fusion of the pair's private and public lives any curious fan could possibly hope for. Oh, and it is exceptionally, wildly disgusting."[29] Brianna Zigler of The A.V. Club gave the film a B grade, and wrote, "The profound depth of feeling generated by Brie and Franco in the midst of this genre film, one perhaps unattainable if they weren't also married in real life, gives Together a real shot as the greatest romance of the year, even if it's also a film that happens to feature a motorized, saw-toothed blade slicing through mutated flesh. It takes more than gore to undermine the sensation of being so in love with someone that you want to get inside their skin."[30]Amy Nicholson of Los Angeles Times wrote that "Nothing about Together screams comedy, yet that's precisely how it's put together."[31]
The Wall Street Journal's Zachary Barnes gave a less positive review, stating, "Together is less a fully conceived horror movie than a plodding relationship drama with some impressively disgusting effects superimposed on it."[32]
In May 2025, Shanks, Brie, Franco, the talent agency Endeavor, and Neon were sued in a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement on the 2023 film Better Half by writer-director Patrick Henry Phelan; their production company StudioFest was the plaintiff in the suit. According to the filing, Better Half was pitched to Brie and Franco in August 2020, who rejected an offer to star because they wanted to produce it themselves and have William Morris Endeavor hire a writer for the material; claims on supposed similarities between the two films were also made.[37] Shanks denied the allegations, stating that he wrote and registered the first draft of his screenplay to the Writers Guild of America in 2019, received development funding from Screen Australia in 2020 and that his agent pitched Franco with his script.[38]
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