Together (2025)

This debut feature of writer-director Michael Shanks is a decent concept that unfortunately doesn't go in any of the really interesting directions it could. It benefits from real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie in the lead roles, but the 102-minute runtime should have allowed for something more focused and interesting.

Tim (Franco) and Millie (Brie) seem to be in a bit of a stale place in their relationship, which means things get a bit strained when they move to the country. Millie has a teaching job lined up, but Tim has no such vocation. He tries to make music, but gigging with friends will be a bit trickier when he needs to rely on Millie for a lift to the train station. After a wander in the countryside around their home, Tim and Millie end up drinking some water from a pool that starts bringing about a strange transformation in them. They cannot be separate from one another for too long, and their bodies want to intertwine and fuse together.

Things start well here, presenting us with a couple of people who are denying the fact that they seem to have moved far away from the closeness they may once have had. There are also moments that impress when it comes to the body horror of the central concept. Ironically, Shanks doesn't weave the elements together well enough, especially when it comes to a finale that is as neutered as it is unsatisfying. There was so much more that could have been done here, even adding a third party to the central problem would have massively improved things, but it seems that I am in the minority for considering this a bit of a disappointment.

It's not actually bad, and both Brie and Franco deserve kudos for committing to the idea and the physicality of their performances, but it's simply not great, despite going to some places you wouldn't expect for something with these leads. It's not just a two-hander though, no pun intended, and Damon Herriman is very good in his supporting role. Mia Morrissey also appears for a couple of scenes, although the most impressive secondary characters are hidden away under some very impressive makeup.

Shanks does fine with his direction. It's unfortunate that the film feels stuck in some kind of limbo, for the most part. Interesting insights are hinted at, but then nothing is pursued. There isn't enough real horror, but the effects and shocks are effective when they happen. I've seen high praise for it from many other film fans though, which makes me think that it's been pitched just right to open it up to a wider audience than it otherwise would have reached. I wish there'd been a bit more depth to it, and I doubt I'll ever be in a mood to rewatch it, so I'll be interested to see how it's viewed when a bit more time has passed.

6/10

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Netflix And Chill: Time Cut (2024)

It's blindingly obvious that Netflix decided to offer up Time Cut to those who already enjoyed Totally Killer on Amazon Prime Video. Whereas that film had a young woman ending up back in the 1980s, where she may be able to stop the slasher who killed her mother, this film has a young woman ending up back in the early 2000s, where she may be able to stop the slasher who killed her sister. Do you already notice one of the big problems this might have in comparison to the film it most closely emulates? Yeah, someone time-travelling to the early 2000s just isn't as ripe for comedy as someone time-travelling to the 1980s. Although, to be fair, Time Cut isn't necessarily selling itself as a comedy. It's just a shame that it fails to sell itself as anything else, completely failing as a slasher, a sci-fi movie, and a thriller.

Madison Bailey plays Lucy Field, a high school student who feels that her life is overshadowed by the killings that devastated their town over twenty years ago, creating a wound that has never fully healed for her parents and others. Stumbling on to a time machine in a nearby hay barn, as you do, Lucy ends up back in 2003, where she meets her sister, Summer (Antonia Gentry), one of the victims of the killer all those years ago. Lucy wants to change the past, but that could also end up jeopardising her own existence. Thankfully, she has a young scientifically-minded man named Quinn (Griffin Gluck) ready to help her, but there's not too much to worry about when this time-travel movie decides to establish some rules that allow it to essentially do whatever it takes to get to the preferred ending of writers Michael Kennedy and Hannah Macpherson.

Macpherson also takes on the directing duties here, having crowd-funded some of her feature debut just over a decade ago before then spending most of her time working on shorts and TV shows (with the exception of something called Sickhouse and a film that slotted alongside others in the Into The Dark series). She may well have a lot of talent, but she's seriously hampered here by the clumsy writing from Kennedy, who also has the story credit. Kennedy likes to mix slashers with different high-concept ideas, having also written Freaky, It's A Wonderful Knife, and Heart Eyes, but I would suspect that you'd enjoy all of those films ahead of this one. Whether they succeed completely or not, they all have a stronger sense of commitment to the main concept. Time Cut feels like something made with extreme reluctance, like a school project written by teens who were keen on the whole idea when they started it, but then soon realised just how disinterested they were as they were forced to do more research and up their word count.

The sad thing is that the cast are generally very good. Bailey is a fantastic lead, making me wish I had more reason to be invested in her plight, and Gentry is absolutely fine as the potentially-doomed Summer. Gluck is enjoyable as Quinn, so good that he makes it easier to accept just how quickly he believes the wild truth as told to him by Lucy. There are others who do well, but the film works best when it shows the central trio trying to find their way to catching a killer and figuring out the butterfly effect of that. 

Sadly, there's nothing here to make it worth recommending to others. As I said in the opening paragraph, this doesn't work as a slasher, nor a sci-fi movie, nor a thriller or mystery. It's just there, disappointingly determined to make the end of the film feel strangely inconsequential, despite at least one big change to the lives of our leads. Avoid.

3/10

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