The horror movie on a daunting love story | EUROtoday
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L’Expression “Elevated Horror” appeared a couple of years in the past within the film circles to explain horror movies that are distinguished by their “intelligent” method of the style (detractors will retort “pretentious”) or by their private, even radical imaginative and prescient. Among the filmmakers being a part of this motion, allow us to quote Jordan Peele (Get out), Ari Aster (Heredity, Midsommar) or Robert Eggers (The Witch and the current Nosferatu).
We will now need to depend on a newcomer on this sub-genre which generally makes a couple of tooth cringe: the Australian Michael Shanks, who indicators with Together His first characteristic movie as a director. Together is the “body horror” that David Cronenberg is now not capable of do. And Michael Shanks turns into the brand new cantor of mutations and mutilations of our bodies, deviant sexuality and unusual ailments (like The substancethe movie by Coralie Fargeat with Demi Moore, launched in November 2024 indoors).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAYQIYAT0BU
Presented on the finish of January on the planet preview on the Sundance Film Festival, within the Midnight part, Together has created shock and aroused vigorous curiosity with the general public and professionals. This pearl of impartial cinema is certainly a metaphor on love co -procession. To write the script, the director was impressed by his relationship with … his spouse. “It is a movie on the way in which love transforms us. On what to reside with two can have terrifying, “explains Michael Shanks, who shot his film near his home in Melbourne.
Togetherfilm of fever, sex and blood
Couple in the city, Alison Brie and Dave Franco (James Franco’s younger brother) are the heroes of this fable. And the actors, married since 2017, drew from their experience to deepen their characters. They embody in the film a couple of thirties who are going through a deep crisis. Tim and Millie, together for ten years, have not had sex for months. He is a missed musician out of inspiration. She, a teacher who boils the pot. They are no longer really in tune. Tim has become a dead weight for Millie. It is she who carries the panties, leads their car (her companion has no license), the marriage proposal.
To give themselves a second chance, the couple leave the city for the countryside, settling in Pitt Road, in a charming pavilion. An isolated house in the heart of a forest. Millie found a teacher position in a neighboring school, and Tim tries to compose music. But one day, during a hike, they get lost in the woods and take a curious path. A thunderstorm breaks out. And they accidentally fall into a crevasse. This contains an underground cave which hides an old chapel with a giant bell. To protect themselves from the rain, they decide to spend the night there. But Tim has the (very) bad idea of drinking the cave water.
Consequently, the couple finds themselves confronted with a supernatural mysterious force which irresistibly pushes them to each other. Tim and Millie no longer control their bodies. They become inseparable and … will slowly merge. They try to keep their distance and make a separate room, but their attempt to separate physically is doomed to failure. They seem to be connected by an invisible thread.
The couple’s mental and behavioral disorders cause damage (Tim smashes her body against the walls of her shower; during a sexual intercourse, he cannot withdraw). And organic horror seizes the story. Together becomes a film of fever, sex and blood. A work on desire. On the suffering of bodies and on suffering bodies. Here, no love without total ingestion of the other. This irrepressible attraction, this fatal attraction, imagines the literal fusion of bodies. What is this devouring drive? Isn’t it basically that of all lovers?
Plato and Aristophanes in Together
The film gives some clues to the spell of which the couple is a victim. Jamie (Damon Herriman, Charles Manson by Quentin Tarantino in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood), one of Millie’s colleagues, evokes a text by Plato. According to the ancient philosopher, our nature was once different: each human being had four hands, four legs and two faces. But eager to take the place of the gods, the men were punished by Zeus, who cut them in two! Since then, we are constantly looking for our half, of the other sex. Aristophanes’ speech in The banqueta Platonic dialogue writes around 380 BC, also tells the love of two beings who try to do only one … while they were split in two!
Very well told and realized, Together is first of all a human drama, a pure melo. It has powerful images (transformation of bodies) and benefits as a bonus of excellent special effects and makeup effects – such as the opening sequence with dogs that reminds of the pound scene in The Thing (1982) by John Carpenter. And above all, we must salute the interpretation of the main actors: Alison Brie, with her immense blue eyes, is very expressive and brings all her sensitivity to the character of Millie.
To uncover
The kangaroo of the day
Answer
In line with different good horrific surprises of the summer time (Substitute, handed out…), Together Fry whereas stimulating our neurons, questioning genres identities and questioning the dizziness of affection. Love phew, the true one!
“Together”, by Michael Shanks (1 h 42). In theaters on August 13, 2025.
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