Together Is Best Date Night Movie To Watch This Year (And The Worst Nightmare For Lovers)

Love is hard. That’s no revelation. If you’re dating, you’re likely praying for the right woman to walk in before you lose your patience and drift into another situationship. If you’re already in a relationship, you’re learning love is a full-time job with unpaid overtime. And if you’ve sworn off romance altogether, good on you. Staying out of the dating pool takes discipline, and discipline deserves a drink.

But then again, what if you are one of those couples who have been together for almost a decade and suddenly realise that you might just be co-depending on each other ( not in a healthy way), what would you do? Would you consider breaking up or trying to work it out? What's the worse that could happen?

Together is a film that makes you question if anyone should ever even consider dating again.

From Australian director Michael Shanks comes Together, a romantic comedy body-horror and his debut movie. A genre-blending monster of a movie that lures you in with charm and then tears the skin off—umm, sometimes literally. It stars real-life couple and co-producers of the film Alison Brie as Millie, a school-teacher and Dave Franco as Tim, a not-so-stable, 30 something musician.

The film opens like any dreamy love story. A married couple moves to the countryside for a slower life that gives them a chance to figure out how they can reconnect with one another. Instead, they get… fused. Physically. Emotionally. Horrifically.

A mysterious force traps them in a twisted embrace, their bodies melding together in ways the human body was never meant to in their new house. Muscles knit. Skin stretches. Sawing each other's limbs apart to literally separate from one another. And as things get more grotesque, so too does their emotional unravelling.

With plenty of co-dependence allegories littering Together, the film goes beyond two people stuck with each other. It’s about what happens when you can’t get unstuck, even when you really want to. (And we don't mean in the metaphysical sense).

At first glance, it feels like a warning to all those who idolise soulmates. Remember the Greek myth where humans were once whole , and split into two halves , destined to seek each other out? This movie is an inverted version of that. It takes that very idea and turns it into a horrifying visual of what would happen if you started to bind together. The movie clearly believes not fun or romantic.

The horror here goes beyond the flesh and the typical jump scares. In fact, it taps into the idea of the rising panic of not being able to escape the person you love. The guilt of wanting to. The truth that sometimes, the person closest to you can be your prison.

A still from the movie trailerYouTube

Alison Brie and Dave Franco are almost too good in this(that's what the trailer reveals). Maybe because it’s not a stretch—being married, they already know how to push each other’s buttons. The chemistry is real, which makes the breakdown that much more painful to watch. Their pain feels raw. Their love, too real to be comfortable.

Critics have praised the film’s originality. It’s got a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is no small feat for a movie that makes people physically squirm in their seats. The atmosphere is thick with dread. The cinematography is claustrophobic. You can almost smell the sweat.

But not everyone is clapping. Some say the film borrows too much from existing body horror classics. Others find the themes too close to home. It pokes at things most of us don’t want to face: what happens when love becomes dependency? What if commitment becomes confinement?

Still, Together is a rare beast. It dares to ask uncomfortable questions and then answers them with a scalpel. It’s funny, until it’s not. Sweet, until it turns sour. Intimate, until it suffocates.

Don't go in expecting it is your date night movie, unless you're trying to test your relationship's limits. It is a film worth watching—if only to remind yourself that space in a relationship isn't just healthy. It's necessary. Sometimes, the scariest thing isn’t being alone. It’s being too close.

Together will hit worldwide on August 8. And when you do go to watch it with your partner, maybe sit a little further apart on the couch. Just in case.