Writer/director Michael Shanks’ debut feature film Together was the talk of the town at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, ultimately selling to Neon for $17 million after one of Park City’s most competitive bidding wars. And I’ve been hearing about this movie ever since then, and what I’ve heard has been fascinating. Like many buzzy Sundance titles, Together had massive hype from the jump, and frequently, especially with Sundance titles, that kind of hype can lead to disappointment. This is not one of those instances, and it’s kind of incredible when I can enter a theater having heard so much about a film for months, and still have that film surprise me in a bunch of ways. Together is a wildly gross and gnarly body horror grotesquerie, but it’s also an insightful and surprisingly sweet and amusing story about the complex dynamics of a long-term relationship.

Millie (Alison Brie) and Tim (Dave Franco) have been together for a while. They’re the kind of millennial white heterosexual couple that refers to each other as ‘my partner.’ They just moved from the city to a house in the countryside after she was offered a teaching job. Tim is a struggling musician who has been aimless for awhile. They’re both codependent but they’re bored and they’re both slowly drifting apart. The couple goes on a hike in the woods when a storm hits and they fall into a cave. They decide to spend the night there and wait out the storm. Once the two drink the water from the cave and make it home, they begin to notice strange and inexplicable things starting to happen to their relationship and their physical bodies.

Together is a pretty explicit metaphor about codependent relationships, and the grotesque and horrific imagery we see throughout the film underlines everything the film wants to say about its central couple. I’m not sure if the film would work this well without a real-life married couple like Franco and Brie at the center, and their casting adds a fascinating layer to this dynamic. It feels lived in and familiar, in ways that are comfortable but you also really feel the building resentment and suffocation that’s been festering in this relationship for a long time. It works equally well as a gonzo, go for broke body horror film, and as a poignant and devastatingly relatable relationship drama that ultimately morphs into a demented little romantic comedy. You’ll feel horrified and sick to your stomach but then you’ll leave the theater feeling like true love is actually possible.

Dave Franco and Alison Brie have the kind of chemistry you would expect when you hire two real-life married people to anchor your film, in all the possible ways that would suggest. The two have a warmth and familiarity with each other, but also the kind of weariness in the eyes that you see in people who have been together for a long time. Brie and Franco seem like they love each other but they’re exhausted with each other and that gives the stakes of this film authenticity and immediacy. They go to weird, dark places individually as actors, but if they weren’t on the exact same page for what they wanted this story to be, it all would fall apart, and it never does. And this film is mostly a two-hander, but we do have a nice supporting performance from Damon Herriman as a colleague at the elementary school where Millie works, who is also their neighbor, and kind of acts as her de facto therapist. His story, as well, goes to places I didn’t expect.

It’s shocking that this is Michael Shanks’ debut feature film. There’s a real sense of confidence here and a strong grasp of the ideas he intends to explore. So often, with a filmmaker’s first feature, it can feel like they are trying to pack in too many ideas and too many themes, because the first-time filmmaker might feel like they’d never get the chance to do this again. It feels like this is a very real collaboration between filmmaker and actors, as you can feel Franco and Brie’s personal voices all over this as well. And for a film that lives or dies on the chemistry of these performers, that’s a considerable point in its favor. Germain McMicking is our cinematographer here, and there’s a lot of very inventive camerawork, particularly in sequences where the two characters are separated, and drawn to each other at the same time. And the sound design here is incredibly immersive – it’s crunchy, gloopy, squelchy and nausea inducing, absolutely adding to the terror of the imagery onscreen. I also will say I have not been this uncomfortable watching a sex scene in a film since Gone Girl, and that’s all I want to say about that.

Together is giving you what’s promised in the ad campaign. This is surreal, disgusting and deeply unsettling stuff, but at its core it’s a surprisingly hopeful and romantic story about the challenges a long-term couple can face. Shanks’ screenplay is tight, sharp and contains just the right amount of lore. When we get to the reveal of what’s really going on here, it doesn’t feel like things are over-explained and the script is giving you just enough to have all of this make sense. Together is gory and bleak but also surprisingly funny and heartfelt. I’d absolutely recommend this for a date night movie, whether it be a first date or a 20th anniversary. Every couple will exit this film with something to talk about, and who knows, it might just bring you closer together.