When filmmaker Michael Shanks set out to create Together, he didn’t just want to craft a body-horror spectacle—he wanted to excavate the discomfort buried in intimacy. “There comes a point in long-term love where you’re not sure where you end and the other person begins,” Shanks says. The film, which sees a couple grotesquely fused by a mysterious organism, uses this literal entrapment to explore emotional dependency, fear of separation, and the quiet terror of commitment.
Together has been turning heads since its Sundance premiere. Think Hereditary meets The Substance, with a dash of Cronenbergian body horror.
Directed by Michael Shanks in his feature debut, the film stars real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie as Tim and Millie—a pair whose relationship is tested in the most grotesque and surreal ways.
“I was always fascinated by filmmaking, both the process of making them and the movies themselves. I was a teenager in the sort of early years of YouTube and I suddenly discovered that you could find resources online to teach you how to do things. So, I would spend my evenings watching tutorials on editing and VFX software, learning how to record music, edit sound effects, etc. I was already writing and directing in my school’s theater program, and so I wrote a stupid little comedy sketch and made it with my friends using a camera I had saved up for — a Sony mini-DV kind of thing,” says Shanks.
Together is a surreal body-horror drama that follows Tim (Dave Franco) and Millie (Alison Brie), a couple whose strained relationship takes a grotesque turn after they move to a remote countryside town. Following a mysterious encounter with an underground pool, they wake up physically fused together by a sticky, organic substance, forcing them to confront the emotional and psychological entanglements of their bond. The cast also includes Damon Herriman as Jamie, a local teacher with cryptic intentions, and Mia Morrissey in a supporting role.
Director’s Statement
Most simply, this is a film about how falling in love transforms you.
I’ve been with my partner for over 15 years and, having met at ‘schoolies’ (a tragic Australian equivalent of Spring Break), I’ve never been an adult without her in my life and vice versa. For as long as I can remember, we’ve lived in the same house, had the same friends, eaten the same food, breathed the same air…
This is a film about the potential horror of sharing a life with someone; the lingering anxieties of commitment writ large. It’s about co-dependency, monogamy, romances and resentments — and that at a certain point, can we truly tell where one life ends and our other half’s begins?
What draws me into a project is finding a one-off, hooky premise, and squeezing that premise for all its juice. Despite the personally resonant and (hopefully) realistically observed characters at the centre of this story, I am so proud how we escalate the horror into things I’ve never seen before on screen and – basically — get a bit fucked with it.
This has been such a wonderful opportunity to play with all the cinematic tools I’ve dreamed of since my DVD-featurettes obsessed childhood. Purely on a technical level, there are things I was able to play with in this production that I still can’t believe.
Our cast – lead by Dave Franco and Alison Brie – could not have been more committed to the project, and gave themselves wholly to a breakneck, incredibly physical production. Their real-life, long term relationship adds a deep layer of authenticity to these characters which are already informed by my own experience. Dave and Alison are the glue that holds this film together and I’m forever grateful they took a chance on my first feature.
I hope this story will not only please my fellow genre freaks, but will resonate with anyone who has been through the crucible of falling in love and sharing your life.
The opportunity to make this film and to work with this team, this cast, and this crew has been an impossible dream come true, and it’s a privilege to finally share our work with an audience, especially at Sundance. – Michael Shanks (Director, Writer)
Turning personal vulnerability into cinematic dread
By digging into his own 15-year relationship and history of DIY filmmaking, Shanks turns personal vulnerability into cinematic dread—one prosthetic goo-pool at a time.
He crafted the screenplay back in 2019, drawing inspiration from his own long-term relationship and personal reflections on codependency and transformation. Shanks is known for his background in guerrilla filmmaking, often handling writing, directing, editing, and visual effects himself—a creative multitasker with a flair for surreal and emotionally charged storytelling.
He poured a surprising amount of personal history into Together, shaping its emotional and thematic core with raw intimacy and surreal metaphor.
“My partner and I have been together for 15 years — almost half of my life. I can barely remember who I am without her, and the notion of fully sharing your life with someone is something I was interested in exploring — a film about how falling in love is a transformative thing,” says Shanks.
This sense of identity entanglement directly inspired the film’s central horror: a couple physically fused together, unable to separate without pain.
He wanted to explore how falling in love can be a transformative—and sometimes terrifying—experience, especially when boundaries blur.
“I hope anyone who’s been in a committed monogamous relationship can find something to relate to in the film. I also want the film to reach any genre/horror fans as I’m extremely proud of the places we’ve taken the many set pieces in the film,” says Shanks.
His background in guerrilla filmmaking—writing, directing, editing, even building props himself—taught him to obsess over every detail. That obsessive energy translated into Together’s intense production, where he even handled most of the visual effects himself to stretch the budget.
He said seeing prosthetics and sets built from his ideas felt like “someone had plucked a real physical thing from a dream I’d had”
“The challenge was always that the film was extremely ambitious for the budget and schedule we had. I hope that it feels like a bigger film than it was. We shot it over the course of about 20 days, and every day, there was at least one scene that was incredibly technically challenging. Even throughout [post-production], I’ve always done my own visual effects, and I ended up needing to do the bulk of the VFX shots across the film, so I’ve had basically no free time this whole year. This freed up our VFX budget so we could put it toward the higher-end VFX concerns, across post, by real VFX artists.”
Shanks drew from personal trauma, including grief over a lost parent and struggles with creative identity as a musician. These elements shaped Tim’s character, whose emotional unraveling mirrors Shanks’s own fears about vulnerability and dependence.
Michael Shanks was initially drawn to ice hockey and pivoted to acting after witnessing Richard Dean Anderson film a scene for MacGyver. He studied Fine Arts at the University of British Columbia, graduating in 1994, and honed his craft through a two-year apprenticeship at the Stratford Festival in Ontario.
Shanks rose to prominence as Dr. Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1, a role he played for ten seasons, earning critical acclaim and a devoted fan base. His performance was marked by emotional depth and intellectual nuance, helping define the series’ tone3. He later starred as Dr. Charles Harris in the medical drama Saving Hope, showcasing his range beyond science fiction.
Beyond acting, Shanks has directed and written for television, including episodes of Stargate SG-1. He’s also appeared in Smallville, Burn Notice, Altered Carbon, and Mr. Hockey: The Gordie Howe Story, reflecting his versatility across genres4.
