If this sounds like the foundation for a realistic relationship movie, I should immediately inform you that Together, directed by Michael Shanks, carves out another helping of body horror -- albeit one loaded with metaphoric suggestions.
The story takes form when Tim and Millie leave the city and move to a rural area where Millie has taken a teaching job. Because Tim doesn’t drive, he feels trapped in a location he doesn't particularly like.
He needn't worry about boredom, though. While walking in the woods, the couple falls into a mysterious cave. From the movie's prologue, we know that bad things will follow if one of them drinks some of the water in the cave.
After a wretched night, Tim and Millie climb out of the cave. They fuss and fight, and, thanks to a strange icky substance acquired while under ground, they begin to stick to each other whenever they touch.
As it pays its horror debts, the movie introduces body contortions, accompanied by strange moments in which the couple fuses in inappropriate places. A sex scene in a restroom stands as one of the movie's weirder highlights.
Shanks wisely grounds his story in the reality of a relationship gone woozy. Both actors -- married in real life -- work at full throttle and the movie makes room for Damon Herriman, who plays one of Millie's colleagues, a friendly guy whose hospitality immediately makes him suspect. C'mon we've seen horror movies before.
Some of the movie's effects struck me as more silly than frightening, but Shanks adds splashes of mordant humor that receive an exclamation point in a sardonically witty epilogue.
No need to make too much out of Together. Not for the squeamish, Shanks's bloody valentine of a movie may not always be clear about what it's trying to say, but it's braced by an unflinching willingness to carry its weirdness to bizarre extremes.
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