“I’m sticking with you, ‘cos I’m made out of glue…” so goes the lyrics to one of The Velvet Underground’s most famous songs. It could also be the tagline for new darkly funny body horror Together, which sees Alison Brie and Dave Franco’s happy-enough couple get themselves into quite the pickle, after they come into contact with a strange substance on a hike.
We’re reluctant to give away more of the film’s plot than that, even though details have been floating around the internet since it premiered at Sundance – and earned itself an impressive 100% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes – back in January . Why? Well, because its first teaser keeps things pretty mysterious, suggesting that the best way to watch it is by going in as cold as possible…
The dialogue-free promo, which you can watch above, opens with teacher Millie (Brie) and struggling musician Tim (Franco) moving into their dream house in the countryside.
Later, Tim encounters a bizarre stand-off between two dogs in the woods nearby and picks one of Millie’s long hairs out of his front teeth, while Millie gets spooked by some creepy doodles one of her students drew in class. What follows is a montage of increasingly twisted clips that see Tim fall into a butthole-looking crevasse and Millie engage in some Exorcist-style contortionism, before they breathlessly confess their love for one another.
Written and directed by Michael Shanks, the movie got rave reviews out of Sundance, with The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney calling it “an ideal midnight date movie for the non-squeamish” and The Guardian’s Benjamin Lee jokingly declaring it “a convincingly gory argument for being single”.
Together releases on August 1. While we wait, check out our guide to the all the upcoming horror movies heading our way.