“Plato wrote that the ancient Greeks believed we were created with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces. but Zeus feared our power so he split us into two separate parts, dooming us to spend our lives in search of the other half.”
What’s in a name? Let me tell you, Billy. When I was first offered the opportunity to watch and review Together out on Blu-ray from NEON, I nearly passed. I saw that it was directed by a Michael Shanks, and I had met Shanks a few years ago. I honestly found him to be one of the biggest idiots I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting in the business. Fortunately, I took a closer look at the thing, and I’m glad that I did. You see, this Michael Shanks is not the idiot I met years ago. Of course, that guy was the Stargate SG-1 actor, and this guy is much younger and now a first-time director, and not a complete idiot after all. So I could watch the film minus the bias I would have had a hard time ignoring if it had been that guy. So I took the opportunity, and I’m happy that I did, because while nothing close to a classic or masterpiece, Together is a rather fresh look for a horror film and first effort for the director.
Dave Franco plays Tim, and Alison Brie plays Millie. The two have been a couple for a while, and they decide to take their relationship to another level as they move together from the city out into the country. Millie is a schoolteacher, and Tim is a lead guitarist who hasn’t had much going on lately. Both are having doubts. Tim is being haunted by some baggage from his past, and it’s having a rather cooling effect on the relationship. Millie is starting to fear she’s going to be carrying the struggling artist her whole life. It doesn’t help that on their first day in their new house, Tim discovers a bunch of tail-tangled dead rats in the ceiling light fixture.
They decide to take a walk out in the wilderness, and that’s where everything goes more than a little crazy. They follow a trail marked with bells and creepy runes. They fall into a cave and spend the night. Things just get really crazy from there. We get a lot of checkbox horror elements here, from the suspicious neighbor, played by Damon Herriman, to the eerie video of some ancient rites being performed in that cave they fell into. Did I mention the cave had church pews embedded in the walls? They start to feel the kind of attraction that would have made a young David Cronenberg a happy camper. To give away any more might be too much to take away from your own discovery.
The best part of the film is the leads. Dave Franco and Alison Brie are married in the real world, so the chemistry doesn’t have to be created. It’s real, and for this film, casting an actual couple was a pretty brilliant idea. The couple’s relationship and how they interact is so much a part of where this film is going. There’s good and bad here, but it’s the kind of stuff that most couples experience, but in a much more literal way. 80% of the film depends on these two leads to play out this rather creepy relationship evolution. All of those beats at just the right times are essential if this thing is going to work. For the most part it does. The major flaw in the film has to be the pacing. Shanks isn’t content to rely so much on the leads selling the emotional beats that he feels he needs to put too many distractions in the way. Hopefully with experience he’ll learn to trust his casting instincts and let them to the heavy lifting. Everything else either adds to the unique atmosphere of the film, or it distracts. There’s a bit of both here, as some of the production design really hits this out of the ballpark. But again Shanks doesn’t quite trust that it’s all working, and every time it wanders away just a little, we lose the momentum that needs to carry the narrative.
Shanks uses his money well, and the best thing I can say about this first effort is that the budget is all up there on the screen. Maybe it’s the short attention spans that modern audiences might have today that leads these kinds of filmmakers astray. They’re not wrong, you know. But don’t make your film to the lowest common denominator, and most of the time he doesn’t. This is quite an original story, and the characters are compelling. The Blu-ray release comes with short interviews with Shanks and then the leads. It’s worth a look, and it’s the kind of film that might freak out some couples, leaving us with a kind of Indecent Proposal kind of couples discussion. Credit Shanks for delivering something worth talking about. Just ask yourself, “Are you sure you want this?”
