The Fountain of Salmacis

Film: Together (2025)
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on massive television.

The trailer for Together from 2025 doesn’t really hide what is going to happen in this film, or at least it hints pretty heavily toward a particular main plot. Even the cover art on the disc combined with the name are going to lead your thoughts in specific directions. For someone like me, who frequently likes to analogize, I’m in a quandary. There are so many different allusions and connections I can make to books, music, and other movies that I was at least temporarily overwhelmed by the possibilities.

That said, if I can find a way to both reference my earliest prog rock musical roots and a more obscure Greek myth, I’m a happy dude. The issue here for me was the fact that I knew where the film was going before I put the disc in the spinner. The trailer gives it away, as does the cover of the DVD. That being the case, this becomes more about how the story is told rather than where the story is going.

Millie (Alison Brie) gets a job teaching at a school in the countryside, which means that her boyfriend Tim (Dave Franco), an aspiring musician, is going to move out to the country with her. Tim has been struggling with the loss of his parents, and we find out eventually that his father died and his mother essentially snapped and simply lay in bed with him after he died. At a going-away party, Millie proposes to Tim and he takes too long to answer, which embarrasses her.

At their new home (and it’s a damned nice home on a teacher’s salary), they go for a hike and get a bit lost and trapped in the rain. A misstep causes Tim to fall into a cave, and Millie joins him. Tim drinks from a pool, which seems like a really bad choice and which we might call an inciting incident. The two end up sleeping in the cave, and when they wake up, their legs are stuck together, something they attribute to mildew or something similar in the cave.

What follows is Tim finding himself uncontrollably attracted to Millie at times. This is attributed to panic attacks, but Tim doesn’t really feel like this is appropriate. Around this time Tim also finds out that a couple named Simon and Keri disappeared recently in the area. Tim and Millie host Jamie (Damon Herriman), one of Millie’s coworkers and tell him about their night spent in the cave. He tells them that the location was the site of a New Age church before it collapsed.

And, naturally, things are going to progress. Frequently, when Tim and Millie touch each other, they seem to get stuck together, which makes sex extremely painful, at least when they are done. This only increases, and it seems to be not just happening to Tim, but to Millie as well, although she also appears to be in denial that she is acting strangely. Soon, it becomes clear that they cannot deny something is happening—they appear to be pulled toward each other involuntarily like magnets at times, and this connection becomes increasingly upsetting. I’m not going to be explicit about what is happening, but it’s not going to be that shocking. Again, it’s telegraphed in the cover art, the trailer, and several times before this in the film itself.

Together is very much a body horror film, and it’s a pretty good one. The fact that where it is going is clearly obvious from the outset means that the question becomes one of how well the story is told and how good the effects are. I like that this sticks with practical effects in the main, although there is some use of digital as well. What is happening is genuinely upsetting in places—this is more unsettling rather than vomit-inducing, though, which is the right choice.

I would have liked this to be more of a mystery. A different name for the film, a different choice of art for the disc, and the ultimate reveal would be a lot more upsetting and would have a much greater impact. Because this is so telegraphed, the focus is much more on the specifics of what is happening and what it looks like (and how they did it) than it is about the actual traumatic event.

As a side note, I also appreciate how much blood is used in this. There aren’t torrents of gushing blood here, but because of what the characters are going through, there are a lot of cuts and tears, and so a lot of blood is a function of the film. It’s a nice bit of verisimilitude that would be easy to either overlook or underplay, and Together gets it just right.

Why to watch Together (2025): If you like body horror, you’ll like this.
Why not to watch: You know where this is going before you even start.