Together (2025): Love and Horror Entwined 🩸❤️

A Couple on the Edge 💔

Tim is a 35-year-old musician who never managed to build a real career. His girlfriend, Millie, a modest schoolteacher, has stood by his side for ten years—but their relationship feels worn and stagnant. Tim blames Millie for holding him back from success, while she quietly wonders if the man she fell in love with still exists.

In a last attempt to salvage what’s left, the couple leaves the city behind, hoping that a move to the countryside might rekindle their connection. But instead of finding peace, they stumble into something far stranger: during a walk through the woods, they discover a mysterious cave. From that moment on, their bodies begin to betray them—literally pulling toward each other, as if desperate to fuse into one being.

The New Wave of Body Horror 🧟‍♂️

A few years ago, mainstream horror was obsessed with slashers—masked killers, bloody knives, and endless reboots. But times have changed. Body-horror has reclaimed the spotlight, thanks to films like Under the Skin, Raw, Titane, Infinity Pool, and The Substance.

These works proved that the unsettling visions of David Cronenberg, Brian Yuzna, and Stuart Gordon still echo in modern cinema—and can even evolve into new, daring forms.

One Flesh is part of this movement, but with a twist. Unlike some of its more surreal or inaccessible predecessors, it aims for a wider audience. Michael Shanks’ film is grotesque and shocking, but it’s also direct, sharp, and strangely funny.

Romance Meets Mutation 💞🧬

What sets One Flesh apart is its use of body-horror as metaphor. At its core, this is a story about a failing relationship. In many ways, it has more in common with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or 500 Days of Summer than with traditional gore-fests. Like those films, it examines love, memory, and disappointment—but through an unexpectedly grotesque lens.

Tim, who has avoided intimacy with Millie for years, suddenly cannot resist being physically close to her, driven by a force beyond reason. Millie, meanwhile, begins to see Tim for who he has become: bitter, selfish, far from the man she once loved.

The more they fight their unnatural attraction, the closer their bodies glue themselves together. The metaphor is painfully clear: when two people stay together too long, they risk losing themselves entirely.

Horror With a Wink 😉🩸

Another filmmaker might have turned this premise into slow, bleak arthouse cinema. Michael Shanks, however, chooses a different path. With distinctly Australian irony, he injects jet-black humor into the grotesque.

Instead of solemn metaphor, the audience gets hideous two-headed mutants, lovers stuck together mid-sex, and an ending that collides syrupy Spice Girls ballads with revolting flesh-horror visuals.

The result is a film that is equal parts disturbing, hilarious, and uncomfortable. It refuses to take itself too seriously, while still landing its commentary on love, dependency, and self-destruction.

Casting Against Type 🎭

Shanks’ casting choices are bold and deliberate. Rather than hire actors associated with serious indie dramas, he selected Dave Franco—often dismissed for goofy comedies—and Alison Brie, known from pop-culture staples like Community and GLOW.

Their performances are not refined or delicate, but raw, messy, and grounded. They don’t play “symbols” of love—they play flawed, human partners whose imperfections feel painfully familiar. This “unpolished authenticity” makes the horror land harder: we don’t see archetypes, but real people caught in an impossible nightmare.

Final Thoughts 🔥

One Flesh may not be the kind of horror that revels in pure scares or jump-shocks, but it leaves a mark. It’s grotesque, funny, and biting, but also thought-provoking. Beneath the absurdity lies a question many couples face: what happens when intimacy stops being a choice and becomes a prison?

Michael Shanks delivers a body-horror that feels uncomfortably close to home, a warped mirror held up to the fragility of relationships. At once disgusting and oddly touching, One Flesh is destined to divide audiences—but impossible to ignore.

Score: 8/10.