Fantasia Fest 2025 Review: ‘Together’ Provokes Without Much Substance
As has been the case for its previous horror movies, NEON has raked up interesting marketing campaigns for some of their more terrifying titles, such as Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs, The Monkey, and Tilman Singer’s Cuckoo. The studio wants as many people as possible watching in cinemas knowing as little as possible about the movie itself. That’s why you’ll see many ads on social media related to the movie that don’t necessarily show footage from the movie. With their latest film, Michael Shanks’ Together, which had its Canadian premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival, the studio has crafted its cleverest marketing campaign yet by associating images of couples in love (or not) with the tagline: TOGETHER. “The perfect date night movie.” In theaters 7.30.
When watching Shanks’ film, one has the impression that the project was based around the marketing campaign NEON bolstered for the movie, because while it definitely has its fair share of provocative sequences, the end result leaves much to be desired.
The film contains the year’s most unoriginal and unimaginative screenplay. This may be exacerbated by the fact that Shanks, stars Alison Brie, Dave Franco, talent agency Endeavor, and NEON, were sued for alleged copyright infringement on the 2023 film Better Half, which apparently shares many similarities with what Shanks has put on screen.
While the writer/director himself has denied the allegations and said, “To now be accused of stealing this story—one so deeply based on my own lived experience, one I’ve developed over the course of several years—is devastating and has taken a heavy toll.” One can’t help but feel a stench of familiarity that plagues Shanks’ screenplay from the minute it begins.
His work may be completely original, and I am inclined to think NEON standing by the director’s side means the script is entirely his own (although the lawsuit is still pending and things have not been 100% cleared up); but that doesn’t remove the fact that Together unabashedly steals from every horror film in the book to act more like an exercise in wanting to shock as many people as possible than actively say something other than what’s on the surface.
Michael Shanks’ Together is poorly written
Together features intense sequences where couple Tim (Dave Franco) and Millie (Alison Brie) are literally (and, eventually, figuratively) glued together after encountering a mysterious force in a cavern that drastically changes their physiology. Where the film seems to fail is whenever it stops the gore and tries to explain things to the audience, either in the mechanics of its horror-driven elements or in the fractured relationship between the couple.
This is a movie where you should theoretically feel the emotions Tim and Millie experience through cinematographer Germain McMicking’s sharp visual language. Having the two actors constantly explain to you through repetitively dull dialogue exchanges that make very little narrative sense as the movie strolls along to an eye-rolling finale, essentially negates the goodwill Shanks had when he introduced us to both Tim and Millie.
It is difficult to discuss some of the meatier aspects of the film without spoiling a thing, and the studio would want you to go into the movie knowing as little as possible. That’s fine and all, but it feels more like a marketing tactic than actively trying to shield you from the surprises (of sorts) this relatively simple story takes. Although Together features amazingly squirm-inducing sequences that made a press screening crowd groan and laugh, the plot itself can’t hold itself together (pun intended) when the movie gets much crazier than its initial few setpieces made it out to be.
I’m all in for a movie that takes multiple directions and swerves from one place to the next, without you knowing what’s about to happen. For instance, Alberto Sciamma’s CIELO, which has also played at Fantasia this year, is one such example where knowing as little as possible will actively improve your viewing experience, especially in its opening five minutes.
Shanks definitely intrigues us in his opening scene, but the momentum is constantly halted by a story that lacks any sense of self-confidence in itself. The dialogues are far too heavy-handed and constantly encourage the audience to perceive the film in a specific direction instead of encouraging them to think about what this literal and metaphorical glue means for the two.
This Neon horror doesn’t have much to offer beyond squirm-inducing gore
Of course, Shanks wants to discuss the nature of relationships, and by nature, toxic relationships, but he doesn’t actively say anything in his presentation of the couple, other than lightly touching upon how the two are having difficulty being a couple. This is exacerbated by Tim’s failed desires to become a musician, while he doesn’t care what Millie wants to do with her life.
That gets dropped quickly when Shanks shifts gears and turns into body horror, where the bulk of its OMG INSANE (!!!) sequences happen. It’s almost as if Shanks wants you to forget that this film should attempt to say something to imbue its body horror mania with enough significance for us to at least be compelled to care about their “split” rather than merely react to things that are, quite frankly, very harrowing.
And while the screenplay has many noble intentions, they get squandered by a nonsensical climax that attempts to tie in what Tim and Millie are experiencing with something bigger, a bit like what Danny and Michael Philippou did with Bring Her Back. But in contrast to RackaRacka’s horror movie, this one actively had something (very distressing) to say about the nature of grief and the unconventional lengths someone will go through to bring their loved one back from the grave.
Together has nothing of interest to say about the nature of toxic relationships. The (predictable) twist that occurs before its allegedly insane climax is so baffling that it removes our suspension of disbelief in attempting to figure out why the two couples are stuck in a situation they clearly do not want to be in.
It also has many narrative leaps in logic that make it harder to believe in what’s going on. For instance, the catalyst begins as Tim and Millie drink some disgusting-looking water from a cave while it’s raining cats and dogs. They could’ve simply used their water bottles to collect rainwater from those and drink something of not the purest quality, but it wouldn’t have made them stuck together. The crisis would be averted, although there wouldn’t have been a film if that happened.
There’s another nonsensical narrative choice that happens in its last half, but that would mean spoiling some of the developments Shanks’ film takes, and I’d rather you discover it for yourself. Many of my friends seem to enjoy it, so I might be the only one who thought the film was a silly and poorly written bore. Without its amazingly intricate (and disgusting) body horror, it may be the year’s most unoriginal and inept genre creation.
Still, the choice of getting both Dave Franco and Alison Brie, who are a married couple in real life, to portray Tim and Millie is very inspired. The two have a great sense of chemistry together, and adding to that the fact that they know each other at a level that few actor pairings do. It’s just a shame that they don’t have compelling material to work with in a movie that seems more concerned with building hype than actively making something more worthwhile for audiences.
Find more Fantasia International Film Festival coverage here, or check out the reviews of two other films there linked below!
Also check out: Fantasia Film Festival 2025: Hold the Fort and Noise Offer Residential Horror
