Sundance 2025: Alison Brie & Dave Franco’s ‘Together’ is Freaky Fun
by Alex Billington
January 29, 2025
Move over, The Substance, there’s another hot new body horror in town! One of my favorite 2025 Sundance Film Festival premieres is this feature directorial debut called Together from the Midnight section of the line-up this year. It’s the first full-length feature from the superbly talented Australian filmmaker Michael Shanks, best known for his award-winning stop-motion short film Rebooted about an out-of-work skeleton in Hollywood. Shanks not only aced that short film, but now he’s rocking Sundance with his orignial body horror comedy. Together stars real life couple Alison Brie & Dave Franco as a couple in the film. It’s a body horror about codependency in relationships, and let’s just say the freaky horror element is about them uh “coming together” in disgusting ways. Yes it’s impossible not to compare it to The Substance, but it’s also unique in many of its own ways, and above all keeps the trend going of terrific body horror films nowadays.
Together is both written and directed by Michael Shanks as his feature debut. It’s also produced by Alison Brie & Dave Franco (and a group of other producers), who got involved when Shanks first met Franco years ago. I’m glad they helped make sure this unique project got properly developed and produced because it’s awesome. Brie stars as Millie, and Franco stars as Tim, a young couple that decide to move from the big city out to the countryside. Because Shanks is Australian, this was filmed in Australia, though it seems to be set in America anyway. The city they leave and their rural new location and anything else is left ambiguous – it’s never named or identified, which doesn’t really matter because the story works well regardless of where exactly it takes place. When they get out there and go for a hike in the nearby woods, they stumble across a strange, super scary cave and accidentally trigger a supernatural response that begins pulling them closer and closer together. In horrifying ways. Even though it may be an obvious metaphor regarding relationships being too interconnected despite issues they need to work on, the film is super fresh & entertaining anyway.
This is one of the best horror films of 2025 so far. Hands down. Featuring excellent, clean, confident genre filmmaking from start to finish. Top quality production and slick cinematography, engaging performances from every cast member, haunting mythology and world building that pulls you in and keeps you intrigued. Plus body horror and gross gore (though not too much to be off-putting) that’s freaky & entirely believable, which makes it even more unsettling to watch. Along with so many crazy cool moments in it that will make anyone squirm and scream. Shanks explained in the Q&A after the Sundance world premiere that they hired multiple contortionists to pull off a few “holy shit” scenes in it, and utilized practical FX for as much of the film as possible. All of this is the mark of a truly great filmmaker, and I think Shanks will go on to have an incredible career after this. But until then, Together deserves to become a massive hit, and I think it will end up being embraced by audiences. The Sundance audience at my screening went wild – especially after a few jump scares elicited full-on screams that echoed around the auditorium making all the laughter even louder.
Even though Shanks has been working on this project for years, it’s coming out just after The Substance has earned an impressive five Oscar nominations, a major achievement for the horror genre. While it is similar in a few ways, Together offers an entirely different body horror experience that one could even say is pretty much the exact opposite of what happens in The Substance (won’t reveal any more than that). If anything these films deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence only in order to state that both are awesome and original and inventive and clever and disgusting and amusing and unforgettable horror creations. I am most impressed by the supernatural mythology worked into Together, how it’s not just some simple thing that starts happening, there is an eerie idea behind it and what’s going on. It’s exciting to discover a top notch film like this and feel elated by how radical and enjoyable it is. I live for these kind of Sundance experiences, especially going in to watch something absolutely no one has seen yet and emerging ready to tell everyone about how they just have to watch this. Get all your friends together for this one when it opens in theaters.
Alex’s Sundance 2025 Rating: 9.5 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
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