Together - Unique Romantic Horror?

The concept of a romantic horror is sometimes seen as an oxymoron. These two genres illicit such opposing emotions, especially when it comes to body horror, that most movies that fit into this quite slim margin tend to become lesser of one - usually sacrificing many horror filled elements to make way for a more provoking romantic story. Together does not make that mistake. This manages to blend a deeply romantic story of codependency and the idea of soulmates, while still being able to display some incredibly disgusting moments, in the best way possible.

The first act of Together came in swinging. We're shown each stage of the transformation in the first few minutes with these two dogs, being careful only to show the crucial steps. There's no explanation, no dialogue of some mythology, we're just shown a simple love story that turns sinister within minutes. This gives us all we need to know going forward and sets the movie up for, not only some amazingly gory body horror that isn't afraid to make us uncomfortable, but also some beautiful imagery. 

This is then displayed further with Tim being haunted by the death of his father. While I haven't fully figured out the exact purpose of that idea, I have a theory. I assume it's something along the lines of one person living their life while the other is in some sort of stasis, yet they're unable to stray from each other. This plays into the idea proposed throughout the whole movie, of Plato's theory of soulmates. 

All this made me realise just how opposing our two main characters are, being almost complete opposites of each other. The biggest one is that Millie enjoys the country and feels as if she's fulfilled her purpose in being a teacher - the first act focuses heavily on her love for teaching, even being the sole reason they move to this town. However, Tim much prefers the city and doesn't really have much of a purpose - his music career is going nowhere and he has no other passions or a job. This is all accentuated so much when Tim proposes the idea of travelling back to the city and being with his band - everything he wants is in the city, yet he can't seem to stray from Millie.

This movie does slow down quite a lot around the second act, however it never feels slow in any way. This is just toned down slightly, mostly in the gore, to focus more on their individual stories while also drawing them together. Millie is out in her new job and is developing her relationship with Jamie, another teacher, while Tim is at home - researching what is wrong with them. I thought it was a good idea to have one of them immediately latch onto the 'cult vibes' while the other tries to ignore it for the sake of their happiness. Millie is simply trying to smooth things over with Tim and their move so is desperately trying to ignore the red flags, even when they may be shouting in her face, however Tim is adamant on some amount of strange activity going on.

I have an interesting theory about their clothes throughout the movie, however I did only start noticing it around the end of the second act and tried to backtrack so this may not be all the way accurate. Anyway, before Millie and Tim move, in their going away party, they make a point of telling us that they're wearing matching clothes - however, they're wearing black. This foreshadows them being connected in some way, but they don't yet have any connection to the cult. As soon as they move, they both start wearing a lot more blue. It seems as if the cult's main colour scheme is a dark blue as its the colour on the bells and the main colour in the scene in the third act where Jamie is trying to indoctrinate Millie. After that scene, they both wear completely different colours from both the cult's blue and each other, showing their voluntary disconnect - Tim is wearing orange and Millie is wearing green. However, once they fuse and become one right at the end of the movie, their one body wears only blue in the small moment we see them. I'm sure Jamie's costumes also play into this in a sense, however I don't remember any of what he wore throughout the movie.

While I didn't find anything I disliked, there is one thing I think I would've liked to have seen done slightly better. When the two merge, it somewhat just looks like their sliding their arms over each other's, it would've been much more interesting to see them displacing each other's bones and actually intertwining, aside from the final fusion. That isn't a movie ruining critique, it's quite minor, I just think it could've been beneficial for the movie.

Surprisingly the ending of this movie is quite sweet, which is not something I thought I'd be saying until I actually saw how it ended. Finally, they both admit their faults and love each other as much as they once did, bringing both the characters and us, the audience, into a sense of calm and security. Of course this is a trap and they throw us straight back into the gore with an incredible scene of the two merging. This is the perfect representation of how the movie is able to strike a perfect tonal balance between the sweet, strangely sometimes funny, and absolutely disgusting sides to its story. Somehow this feels no more a love story than it does a horror, and vice versa. It may be the first movie - or at least the first body horror - I've seen to be able to find that balance so perfectly and make it seem so effortless.