{"id":343777,"date":"2025-08-14T11:55:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T11:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/343777\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T11:55:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T11:55:13","slug":"alison-brie-and-dave-franco-are-horrors-newest-scream-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/343777\/","title":{"rendered":"Alison Brie and Dave Franco are horror’s newest scream team"},"content":{"rendered":"

A<\/strong>t NME, we like to ask interviewees to name the one album that they return to time and again. It\u2019s a question that can tell us a lot about someone\u2019s taste and inner-workings \u2013 though we\u2019ve never had an answer like the one provided by Alison Brie and Dave Franco<\/a>. We\u2019d naturally imagined that they\u2019d answer individually, but the husband-and-wife acting duo take a rather different approach.<\/p>\n

After a little deliberation, with a twinkle in her eye, Brie makes a suggestion: \u201cI was gonna say one that we share\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOn three\u2026\u201d Franco replies immediately, before they count down in unison: \u201cOne, two, three\u2026\u201d Precisely in sync, they shout out the same classic George Harrison<\/a> album: \u2018All Things Must Pass!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After the pair break into peals of laughter, Brie explains: \u201cWe just love George.\u201d It\u2019s a rare couple whose tastes match so specifically, but Brie and Franco\u2019s united front has become something of an internet reference point of late (hence the viral video<\/a> of him, erm, drinking water from a towel that she\u2019d slung around her neck after a workout). This is thanks to Together, their gnarly new body-horror<\/a> with first-time feature director Michael Shanks.<\/p>\n

\"\"Alison Brie, Dave Franco and \u2018Together\u2019 director Michael Shanks. CREDIT: Getty<\/p>\n

Brie and Franco co-produced the movie and star as Millie and Tim, a couple whose relationship is showing some wear. She\u2019s a teacher, he\u2019s an out-of-work musician who\u2019s immersed in big city life. Unlike Millie, Tim\u2019s such an innate urban dweller that he doesn\u2019t know how to drive. So it\u2019s probably not a great idea for them to move out to the middle of nowhere for her new job, a questionable decision that sets in motion a series of grisly events when they stumble upon a cave signposted by mysterious markings.<\/p>\n

After Tim slurps from a seemingly unspoiled pool of water, they find that their bodies begin to fuse together\u2026 and then things get really weird. On one level, Together is a straight-up horror indebted to the likes of David Cronenberg\u2019s remake of The Fly and, perhaps, the grosser moments in John Carpenter<\/a>\u2019s own rubbery 1980s remake The Thing. On another, it\u2019s a smart commentary on co-dependency in relationships; although Tim and Millie are obviously not quite on the same page from the start, they can\u2019t seem to imagine life without each other.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe body-horror connects to these fears of monogamy and toxic co-dependency\u201d \u2013 Alison Brie<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

When the actors read the Shanks-written script, says Franco, \u201cWe were initially blown away by these horror set-pieces, which were so innovative and like nothing we had ever seen before. After I read it, I turned to Alison and said, \u2018I think this is the one we should do together because I think our real-life relationship could lend itself to the relationship in the film.\u2019 These characters have been together for over a decade and hopefully when you\u2019re watching us on-screen, you can feel some weight from our real relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a pretty straightforward metaphor,\u201d adds Brie, \u201cin terms of the body-horror connecting to these fears of monogamy and toxic co-dependency, and an exploration of that. We both loved how it tied into this relationship story and there was excitement, as actors, about getting to do things that we\u2019ve never gotten to do on-screen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Alison Brie and Dave Franco in \u2018Together\u2019. CREDIT: Neon\/Entertainment Film Distribution<\/p>\n

Brie and Franco have been together for 13-and-a-half years, having met at New Orleans\u2019 Mardi Gras in 2011. She was out boozing in a restaurant with a mutual friend, who invited Franco to join them. Brie and their pal were already \u201cpretty messed up\u201d, Franco has said, when he arrived on the scene before they headed out to a bar. Brie duly handed him a beer and informed him it was laced with MDMA, which is fitting considering it\u2019s been dubbed \u2018the love drug\u2019. They shared the spiked booze and, Brie has explained, spent the night \u201clip-locked\u201d.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s a typical tale of boy meets girl, girl gets boy high and they go on to make one of the wildest horror movies of 2025. Together is their fifth film collaboration, following the 2020 Franco-directed and co-written horror The Rental<\/a> and the 2023 rom-com Somebody I Used To Know, which he also directed and co-wrote with Brie (who starred in both movies). Actors, like musicians, have jobs that can entail working away from home for weeks or even months on end. Franco and Brie seem to have found a means of combining their schedules since they both appeared in the 2017 comedy The Little Hours. Is this a life\/work hack to spend more time together?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s part of it!\u201d Franco replies enthusiastically.\u00a0\u201cI think that is why we initially started working together,\u201d adds Brie, \u201cbecause we had spent so much time apart on jobs. Certainly it\u2019s the reason we wrote Somebody I Used To Know together.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve heard from a couple who were fighting all week and they said [watching \u2018Together\u2019] actually helped them make up\u201d \u2013 Dave Franco<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Brie is quick to insist that this doesn\u2019t mean she and Franco are co-dependent in real life, since they work apart far more than they do together, a clarification that points to the uncomfortable questions raised by their new movie. It may be an awkward watch for certain couples, given that it addresses the power imbalance inherent to some relationships, as well as Tim and Millie\u2019s flatlining sex life and the nagging worry that they\u2019re simply sharing their lives out of habit. Are we to take from Together that all relationships are doomed to co-dependency?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we love about this movie,\u201d says Brie, \u201cis that every person will take it differently depending on their own feelings about relationships or fears about monogamy. It\u2019s been very interesting, seeing the reactions, because this movie really does hold a mirror up to the audience and reflect back to you whatever your feelings or fears might be, whether you\u2019re in a relationship or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve heard from a couple who were fighting all week and they said it actually helped them make up,\u201d adds Franco. \u201cAnd on the flipside, we talked to single people who\u2019ve seen it and said, \u2018This is a strong argument for staying single!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Franco and Shanks bonded over a love of horror movies (the director admired The Rental, Franco\u2019s directorial debut, which greased the wheels of their relationship). Like most genre nuts, the California-born and bred actor fell in love with scary movies as a youngster. He recalls watching Candyman at a sleepover and immediately looking in the bathroom mirror to see if he could summon the titular ghoul by uttering his name five times, as per the film\u2019s lore.<\/p>\n

He was also struck by the original adaptation of Stephen King<\/a>\u2019s It, feeling particularly haunted by the image of Tim Curry\u2019s Pennywise The Clown rising up from a storm drain: \u201cFor the week after I watched it, I would shower with the bathroom door open while wearing a bathing suit because I thought he was gonna come out of the shower drain and get me, and I needed my mum to be there and save me if need be.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Exorcist and Poltergeist provided Brie\u2019s childhood cinematic scares \u2013 after watching them, she slept on the sofa because the living room somehow felt safer than her bedroom. Although she\u2019s now writing her own spooky movie (which she\u2019s keeping schtum about), she was something of a lapsed horror fan when she met Franco. As a \u201csingle woman living alone,\u201d she explains, frights were not at top of her list of priorities. Once they started dating, Franco became her personal horror algorithm: \u201cI\u2019d be like, \u2018OK, this one is actually worth you being scared for the next week,\u2019\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

The key question, as Brie puts it, was whether \u201cthe artistry was worth the scare\u201d. When it came to the likes of Hereditary<\/a>, It Follows and Get Out<\/a>, the answer was in the affirmative. Together should soon join that pantheon of greats, thanks in part to those aforementioned set-pieces. When an electric saw is introduced early in the tale, you just know \u2013 in keeping with the narrative principle Chekhov\u2019s gun, derived from playwright Anton Chekhov\u2019s assertion that a firearm shouldn\u2019t appear in a work of fiction unless it\u2019s going to go off later on \u2013 that we\u2019ll be seeing it again.<\/p>\n

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Shot in just 21 days, Together is also darkly comic due to the actors\u2019 deadpan performances amid outlandish plot points. In one exception to this rule, Franco says he went \u201cfull Nick Cage<\/a>\u201d for the scene where Tim is searching for pills to try to slow down the body-fusing process and bellows: \u201cMUSCLE RELAXANTS!\u201d If that line delivery doesn\u2019t become a meme, they need to shut down the internet, which clearly isn\u2019t fit for purpose anymore.<\/p>\n

Much has been made of the fact that one scene required the actors to be stuck together for 10 hours (\u201cThat\u2019s a long time to sit on someone\u2019s leg,\u201d Brie quips). The ultimate talking point, though, will probably prove to be the shot of Tim\u2019s penis, which has become affixed to Millie in a manner that we\u2019ll leave to your imagination. Said penis is portrayed via prosthetics and is not, Franco seems keen to explain, actually based on his own. \u201cWe\u2019d like it to be a little thicker,\u201d says Brie.<\/p>\n

For all the stunts, however, it\u2019s the questions raised by Millie and Tim\u2019s relationship that will stay with you after the credits roll. Brie says she had \u201cworkaholic\u201d tendencies when she met Franco, who inspired her to slow down and wait for roles she was passionate about. Did anything in Together jolt them into reassessing other aspects of their relationship, though?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, gosh,\u201d says Brie, seeming lost for words for the first time in our conversation. \u201cThis is so lame to say, but there\u2019s a moment where our characters are looking at each other and saying how much they love each other.\u201d She gives Franco a lingering look. \u201cI related to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Together\u2019 is in UK cinemas from August 15<\/p>\n