One Thing I Like About Together

The whole marketing push for Together had me scared of that movie like nothing’s been able to since the trailers for Barbarian. Those trailers suggested that we’d see something so impossibly horrifying in the basement that I could very well faint from sheer terror; Together‘s trailers kept showing just enough body horror imagery that I was afraid seeing their extended forms would have me vomiting in the theater.

I’ve mentioned it before, but the only time I’ve fainted in a movie is when a teaching assistant dropped Un Chien Andalou with no warning onto a class full of first-year cinema studies students. Tunnel vision, walls closing in, the works. That’s stuck with me ever since. I still go into horror situations, and especially gross-out situations, concerned that I won’t be able to intellectualize my way around it, and my body will betray me.

I don’t want to throw a wet blanket on Neon’s marketing push, but: the body horror in Together does get increasingly graphic, but at least for me, it never really crossed the line from unsettlingly suggestive to outright viscerally upsetting.1 The most squirmy moments — like one really well-executed scene in a bathroom stall — are mostly kept to the level of suggesting a ton instead of showing too much. At least, until the very end, by which time I was ready for them.

So overall, the movie isn’t as bonkers over-the-top as I’d been expecting and, honestly, hoping for. But it’s better as a result. There is a sequence of scenes leading up to the final act that are all fantastic, and they only work because the movie puts so much time into letting you get attached to the characters.2 They’re a likable, believable couple who are having some very relatable problems.

Of course, they’re believable as a couple because they’re Alison Brie and her real-life boypartner Dave Franco. But the appeal isn’t just because they have believable chemistry, but because they have to be good at horror and rom-com comedy and physical comedy and relationship drama, and it turns out they are really good at it. And also sexy horror black comedy, which I hadn’t even known was a genre.

There’s a beat where Millie asks Tim why he happens to be carrying a lighter, and it works so well to show the depth of their relationship: that comfortable familiarity that runs deep even as you’re keeping secrets from each other.

Speaking of believability, it does a fantastic job of recreating what it actually feels like to have an anxiety attack or a full-on panic attack, at least in my experience. There are multiple scenes that play off the idea of anxiety dreams or horrific nightmares, and they work not because you’re suddenly surprised that it’s a dream, but because you know that it’s a dream, and you’re dreading what you’ll see just as much as the character is.

But my favorite thing about Together is how it plays off my favorite of one of the oldest moments in horror and suspense movies: the “don’t open that door” scene. There are multiple scenes where you know that there’s something horrific happening on the other side of the door, and you don’t want to open it, but you’re compelled to.

What makes these moments interesting again is that both the ambiguity and the motivations are changed. It’s still horrific, even though there’s little mystery about what’s happening on the other side of the door; by this point, you know exactly who’s behind it, and you have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. And you’re compelled to open the door not out of whatever it is that motivates horror movie characters to open doors that they shouldn’t. You’re compelled because you care about the person on the other side.

And the horror isn’t “something horrible might happen to me” but “something horrible might happen to them.” You can’t bear to look at it, because looking at it will make it real, and yet you have to.

(And because everything in Together is a metaphor, it symbolizes the aspects of relationships you can’t stand to face, when you know your partner’s going through something tough, and you don’t want to be confronted with it but you still have to).

I liked it because it made those feel fresh again, more genuine than ritualistic things you see in horror movies. I wasn’t just processing the scene like a horror movie, but feeling it down to my core, the same sense of dread that the character would be feeling.

I also liked it because it was perversely romantic. Despite the unmistakable metaphor of body horror as codependency, despite the multiple friends telling these characters that their relationship is toxic because the other one is such a drag, despite their worry that they won’t be able to escape, there’s the realization that they were already trapped even before the supernatural stuff started happening. Because they’re too much in love, which isn’t something you can intellectualize your way out of. And maybe it’s just me, but I think that’s pretty sweet.

The rest of this post contains spoilers for Together, where I go into more detail about my favorite sequence.

The scenes start on the last night before the final act, when they both finally realize what’s happening to them is real.

First is Millie trying to force her way into Tim’s music room. The sound effects are so brutal and so evocative, there’s no mystery of what’s happening (because we’d already seen similar from Tim in the shower), but you just don’t want to see it. So we hear a smash and see a streak of blood against the glass, which for me was the single most upsetting image in the entire movie.

Then there’s their conversation at the dinner table, where she’s still in denial and trying to come up with a rational explanation. And again, the single image that makes it exceptional: the drop of blood that has forced itself in a straight line towards Tim, abruptly switching direction after he’s stood up and moved around the table to follow her.

Then the highlight, which is the bonkers scene in the hallway. By this point, we’ve gotten kind of used to seeing his body taking abuse, so we can only imagine what’s happening to Millie on the other side of the door. We get a close-up of Tim’s bones cracking and popping, An American Werewolf in London-style, as he’s pulled down the hall, before the reveal of Millie’s body unnaturally bent and twisted.

And amidst all of that intensity, they respond both like characters in a horror movie and like a bickering couple who’ve been together for years. She’s screaming “why is this happening?” while it’s also clear that she’s finally no longer in denial, and is implicitly admitting that he was right all along. They’re fairly smart characters, so they think to reach for the valium, and Tim points out “they call it diazepam now.” And while all the bone-cracking and skin-melding is going on, they’re furiously swallowing pills and licking or snorting them off the floor. The level of over-the-top insanity I’d been hoping for the entire movie (although the bathroom stall sex scene was a pretty good contender).

Finally, the scene in the trailers, where she’s physically separating them with the not-at-all-subtly foreshadowed mechanical saw. What I loved about this scene was that it was different in tone from what I’d expected from the trailers. We’d seen Millie with a steely resolve, fully prepared to cut herself free, no matter how drastic and painful it seemed. But the actual scene actually plays out like a couple who still deeply care about each other and still have a sense of casual familiarity, even when they’re doing something horrific. (And especially welcome: the scene was played for tension, as the actual act wasn’t particularly graphic. At least, the part that I could see through my fingers over my eyes).

Followed by a short, dialogue-less scene of them in the aftermath, sitting on the floor and eating. He offers her what he has, she silently shows him that she’s already got a sandwich.

That whole sequence is the heart of the movie, and it’s what makes the whole thing work. The final act is pretty standard horror movie stuff, relatively: it explains stuff that probably didn’t need to be explained, and it takes the codependency metaphor to its only logical conclusion.

But because of what came before it, it ends up being more than just a darkly comic satire. There’s a sense of romanticism to it that makes the friends’ warnings seem irrelevant. It was never possible for either of them to just walk away, because they were too much in love. It’s not a happy ending, but it’s not a downer, either.

Or at least, it leaves it up to your own interpretation. I thought the final shot was a goofy Twilight Zone-style stinger, instead of a genuinely cynical condemnation of sacrificing your own identity to a relationship. But then, I’m also somebody who frequently finds himself talking about what “we” are doing more often than what “I’m” doing, so maybe you get out of Together what you bring to it.

I think the key is playing “Two Become One” during the end, which yeah, is a fairly obvious needle drop for a scene that’s supposed to be comically horrific, but it has more significance in the moment. It’s the record that Millie mentions while her friend is calling Tim a loser, because it was a special thing that he’d done for her early in their relationship. You can tell that the friend thinks that that’s “basic,” because she dismisses it as early-relationship sentimentality and asks what Tim has done for her recently. Which is a question Millie can’t answer.

But the other scenes make it feel like the friend is missing the point. In an earlier scene, Millie had already happily acknowledged that the two of them were “basic.” And so is the whole idea of “love languages,” and keeping a running tab of what your partner’s done for you lately. Facebook keeps showing up, and initially, I’d thought it was mostly there to advance the plot, but it also symbolizes the aspects of a relationship that are sincere vs the ones that are purely performative for people on the outside.

Together has a romantic notion underneath that true love is about years of shared experiences. Casual familiarity that comes from understanding the other person, not just living with them. Special moments that make you feel special, even though they might seem mundane to anyone else.

And the mundane moments that have become special, because they’re part of the thousands of reminders that you’re not alone in the universe. Like finding out you’ve both been secretly stress-smoking and sharing a cigarette together. Or mentioning that valium is called diazepam now, in the midst of one of the most horrifying nights of your life, because you’re so used to telling each other interesting things you found out that day.

Earlier, we saw tension in their relationship in a conversation with their neighbor, where they suspect that their relationship has become nothing more than accounting for each other’s deficiencies. The difference between “you complete me” and “you perfectly complement me.”

I’m not suggesting that the final shot is coming out in favor of losing your identity to your partner. But it does frame the last scene as a final grand romantic gesture, where they’re not falling into codependence because they’re not complete enough to make it on their own, but because they both choose to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the other.

1
But then again, I’m no longer an extremely impressionable and sheltered college freshman.

2
No pun intended, for once.

1 But then again, I’m no longer an extremely impressionable and sheltered college freshman.

2 No pun intended, for once.