Whether your preferred cliche comes from “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening et al. (“Love Is Hell”) or French philosopher-playwright Jean-Paul Sartre (“Hell is other people”), hopefully you find, like I do, a comforting universality to the idea that sharing your life with another person can be really, really hard.

What does it look like when you take that idea, as the new horror film “Together” does, to its logical extreme? Turns out: It’s pretty gross!

In writer/director Michael Shanks’ morbidly funny treatise on codependency and commitment, love and interpersonal toxicity, our lead couple — Millie, a teacher; Tim, an indie musician — decamp from what is presumably Seattle for the small fictional town of Fulton, Washington, where Millie has gotten a job.

While out on a hike near their new home, the couple (played by real-life marrieds Alison Brie and Dave Franco) end up trapped in a creepy sinkhole during a storm. When they resort to drinking from a pool of water, they ingest more than just (I’m guessing) giardia.

Infected by whatever is in the water, first Tim and later Millie develop an insatiable, unstoppable thirst for their partner, inexorably pulled together and eventually starting to fuse, flesh on flesh merging like two sausages in one casing.

That’s a wild divergence from the film’s outset, when their relationship is as stagnant as that sinkhole water. They’re not having sex and they’re sniping at each other, resentful of sacrifice and focused on the limitations of partnership rather than its possibilities.

Aided by flashes of the personal traumas and shared history that keep them intertwined against all odds, we see their togetherness as less of a choice and more of a habit — hardly an uncommon relationship pitfall. But now they can’t be apart emotionally and they can’t be apart physically. Separating hurts.

“Together” began with a professional bang: It was picked up by film distributor Neon at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival for a reported $17 million. But since that strong start, the film’s release has been plagued by legal issues after Shanks, Brie and Franco were accused of copyright infringement by the creators of 2023 indie film “Better Half,” another body horror film that allegedly explores a very similar concept.

As a genre, body horror films' ability to externalize abstract emotional concepts is unmatched. But that also means they walk a tightrope over whatever Big Idea the script is kneading; step carefully lest you get too literal and send viewers’ minds wandering away from the story and into an intellectual exercise.

For vast swaths of this movie, despite excellent, unsettlingly comic performances from Brie and Franco, all I could see was the Big Idea, rather than two people on a horrifying journey. But the more gruesome the story gets (including a creature that rivals “The Substance’s” Monstro Elisasue for sheer goopy grossness and grand metaphorical impact), the stronger it is, as the over-the-top ick kept my brain present.

While the film’s ending is narratively unambiguous, its broader implications are enticingly open to interpretation. What’s the price of partnership? Is it worth paying? That’s for every couple, and every movie viewer, to decide on their own.

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'TOGETHER'

3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for violent/disturbing content, sexual content, graphic nudity, language and brief drug content)

Running time: 1:42

How to watch: In theaters July 30

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