Together

Real-life partners Dave Franco and Alison Brie play an insecure, unmarried couple well past the seven-year itch phase who take the plunge and move to a big old house in the country. Their commitment phobia gets exacerbated after taking another kind of plunge, this time into a mysterious cave they discover while hiking. Whatever was in the water they drank while stuck in the cave causes supernatural body horror shenanigans to take over their lives.

The debut of writer/director Michael Shanks features some good ideas and a few effective scares, but it fails to get us much invested in whether or not this couple stays together or even survives. These two may be played by attractive actors, but they aren't compelling characters, and their story is underdeveloped to the point of stagnancy. The picture suffers from three of the biggest problems that plague contemporary low-to-mid-budget horror movies: The allegory is much too direct and on the nose, the visual and sound effects attempt to be fresh and creepy but end up feeling generic, and the fact that there is only one other character in this two-hander makes the pay-off unsatisfying.