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San Francisco Chronicle
a day ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Review: ‘Together' fuses love with horror in all too convincing ways
Alison Brie as Mille, left, and Dave Franco as Tim in 'Together.' Germain McMicking/Neon Phrases describing 'Together' you're likely to read include co-dependent, body horror and black comedy. All accurate as far as they go. But it makes me want to add, ain't there anyone here for love? The movie stars real-life married couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco and boy, is it evident. Everything Millie and Tim, the hapless pair they play, do and say feels authentic, spontaneous and heartfelt. Their easy familiarity, insecurities, the needs they can and can't fulfill for one another, anger, passion and, yes, terror play like they could only come from folks who've been in love for a long time. Advertisement Article continues below this ad And they seem to be in it for the long haul, if it doesn't kill them. Alison Brie as Mille, left, and Dave Franco as Tim in 'Together.' Germain McMicking/Neon The generously shared intimacy on display makes all the scary and repulsive stuff seem like more than just good horror movie elements; they're metaphors for relationship hurdles, emotional ickiness made flesh. More Information 'Together': Horror. Starring Dave Franco, Alison Brie and Damon Herriman. Directed by Michael Shanks. (R. 142 minutes.) In theaters Wednesday, July 30. This feature debut from Australian writer/director Michael Shanks basically takes one idea and wrings it dry: How do we become closer without losing ourselves in one another? (The filmmaker spoke up about a copyright infringement lawsuit surrounding the film last month.) It can be too much at times, but isn't everything about true love? And being so single-minded about his theme enables Shanks to examine most of what can go wrong between partners. Well-deployed humor, throughout the film but especially between this man and woman, helps make it bearable. The best joke is that, despite everything, these two are probably made for each other. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Alison Brie as Mille, left, and Dave Franco as Tim in "Together." Ben King/Neon Together for a decade before moving from the city to the country, where Millie's landed a teaching job, she and Tim know each other well. But doubt lingers about absolute commitment. Tim hesitates too long when Millie proposes in front of all their friends at a going-away party. Her favorite song is the Spice Girls' '2 Become 1' yet she's quick to say, 'If we don't split now, it will be much harder later.' He's a guitarist who's still pursuing a career that's never really taken off. Tim nonetheless feels he's giving up something big for Millie with the move, while she sees herself as the sacrificing one while he's chased his failed dream. They haven't had sex in months. Alison Brie as Mille in 'Together.' Ben King/Neon Still, a reset might be what they need. Their new house in the woods is roomy and beautiful, a strange pack of fused rats in the rafters notwithstanding, and has lovely hiking trails nearby. Advertisement Article continues below this ad Losing their way one stormy afternoon, Millie and Tim fall into a pit. There are remains of a Plato-worshipping church and something in the water down there. They wait out the rain overnight and wake up more connected than ever before. Painfully so, but it's nothing compared to the physical and mental torments about to drive them unimaginably closer. Dave Franco as Tim, left and Alison Brie as Mille in 'Together.' Germain McMicking/Neon Brie and Franco's interplay persuasively cuts blood-curdling rawness with sensitivity and the civility people cultivate in order to live together. Their physical acting is just as incredible. Millie and Tim go through increasingly agonized contortions as they struggle against an ever more powerful, mutual attraction. It can be hard to tell where the flexible actors end and the special effects — credited to a number of the artisans who worked on 'Furiosa' — seamlessly begin. Let's just hope that was a prosthetic in the overhead toilet stall shot. It's the actors' emotional intelligence, though, that creates the movie's true onscreen magic. This is like an Ingmar Bergman scenario directed by Sam Raimi. However you slice it, 'Together' is a great love story. The ghastliness of it all is the chef's kiss. Advertisement Article continues below this ad
Wall Street Journal
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Arts Calendar: Happenings for the Week of July 27
• 'Together' (July 30): After moving to the countryside, Tim and Millie (married actors Dave Franco and Alison Brie) encounter a supernatural force that causes horrifying changes to their bodies. • 'The Naked Gun' (Aug. 1): Liam Neeson, Paul Walter Hauser and Pamela Anderson star in this action-comedy reboot of Leslie Nielsen's police-parody franchise.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Did Dave Franco and Alison Brie's new horror flick ‘Together' rip off another movie? Here's what both sides are saying.
In a copyright lawsuit, the producers of "Better Half" claim that the premise of "Together" was stolen from their 2022 romantic comedy. Filmmaker Michael Shanks's debut feature Together is one of the most anticipated horror films of the summer — but it's not without controversy. The Sundance Film Festival darling — it sold for a reported $17 million to distributor Neon following a bidding war — stars real-life husband and wife Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a married couple whose vacation takes a turn when (spoiler alert!) a supernatural force causes their bodies to merge. It's a funny, albeit terrifying premise — and one that another production company alleges was stolen from its film, Better Half. Shanks, as well as the talent agency behind the Together team, deny the allegations. But that hasn't stopped people from talking about whether Together is really a rip-off. With Together heading to theaters on July 30, here's an explainer of the drama. What is the team alleging? Back in May, producers of the indie movie Better Half, Jess Jacklin and Charles Beale, filed a lawsuit against the producers of Together, alleging copyright infringement. (Better Half was written and directed by Patrick Henry Phelan, however, Jacklin and Beale's production company, StudioFest, is the only plaintiff named in the suit.) According to an article in Entertainment Weekly, Jacklin and Beale claim that the makers of Together stole the concept of Better Half, in which a couple 'wake up to find their bodies physically fused together as a metaphor for codependency.' While the main characters in Together are married and in Better Half they are strangers who just had a one night stand, both films show how the couple at the center 'navigate daily life as their physical attachment progresses and they start to control each other's body parts,' per the lawsuit. The suit also notes that both couples attempt to use chainsaws to separate themselves from one another. The Better Half producers also note a number of other details that the movies share, including a reference to the Spice Girls, the professions of the main characters and bathroom scenes in which both couples attempt to hide their intertwined condition from a third party. According to the suit, the films also include references to Plato's Symposium, which dissects the meaning and significance of love. The Better Half team also claims that Franco's and Brie's agents at WME were sent a copy of the script for Better Half in 2020, but they ultimately passed on the project. It's worth noting that while Together is described as a horror movie, Better Half is billed as a romantic comedy. The Brooklyn Film Festival, where Better Half premiered in 2022, features the following description for the film on its website: 'According to Greek mythology, humans were once two-faced, four-armed, four-legged creatures, until Zeus split us in two, leaving us in an endless search for our other halves. Fast forward to modern day: Arturo, a hopeless romantic in search of true love, and Daphne, a serial polygamist allergic to commitment, meet for what should be a one-night stand, and quite literally find their other half when their bodies fuse during sex. The haphazard journey to come undone might just reveal what they'd been missing all along.' Better Half appears not to have received distribution after its festival run and is unable to be viewed online at this point in time. What the team has said WME, the talent agency representing Franco, Brie and filmmaker Shanks, has vehemently denied the Better Half allegations. Speaking to IndieWire, a spokesperson for WME stated, 'This lawsuit is frivolous and without merit. The facts in this case are clear and we plan to vigorously defend ourselves.' In a joint statement on June 18, Neon and WME alleged that the plaintiffs are doing 'nothing more than drumming up 15 minutes of fame for a failed project, demonstrated by the fact they contacted the press before filing their lawsuit, and did so without doing the most basic due diligence.' They accused Jacklin and Beale of searching for a payday by making waves in the press. 'We look forward to presenting our case in court,' they said. That same day, Shanks, who wrote and directed Together, shared his own statement on Neon's Instagram and X accounts, calling the accusations 'devastating.' He said Together came from a 'deeply personal' place as, like Franco's and Brie's characters, Shanks said he is in a long-term relationship, and that his own experience of the 'entanglement of identity, love, and codependence' is what inspired Together. 'Tim's story, his love for Millie, his relationship to his family, his relationship to unfulfilled ambitions as a musician, is completely rooted in my own personal life,' Shanks said in his statement. 'I lost my father at a young age in the same way our main character does, his trauma is rooted in my own. To have this called into question is not only deeply upsetting but entirely untrue.' Shanks also stated that he completed and registered the first draft of Together in 2019 — before Better Half was sent to Franco's team at WME — and began developing it with Screen Australia in 2020. Franco came onboard in 2022 after meeting with Shanks, and Brie, Franco's real-life wife, joined the project shortly after. 'To now be accused of stealing this story — one so deeply based on my own lived experience, one I've developed over the course of several years — is devastating and has taken a heavy toll,' Shanks said. Check out the trailer for Together below: Is it common for movies to be accused of plagiarism? Plagiarism accusations occur fairly often in Hollywood, and they occasionally receive a lot of attention. Last year, the Alexander Payne film The Holdovers was accused of stealing elements of Simon Stephenson's script Frisco, which was on the 2013 Blacklist of the most popular scripts circulating in the industry. Stephenson filed a complaint with the Writers Guild of America, which said it was not within the scope of the organization to handle. In the case of Frisco and The Holdovers, both scripts are available online, allowing people to make their own judgments on social media about the similarities — with many saying the scripts were too different to make plagiarism claims. Payne, who directed The Holdovers from a script written by David Hemingson, spoke at the Sarajevo Film Festival in August 2024 about the situation. Payne claimed there was no merit to the plagiarism allegations, which never materialized into a lawsuit. 'I didn't even pay attention to it because kooky accusations come out of the woodwork all of the time and this didn't even bother me but then it kind of kept coming, I thought, 'Well, that's dumb,'' Payne said, according to Deadline. Filmmaker and actor Justin Baldoni was also accused of plagiarizing his 2019 directorial debut Five Feet Apart, about teenagers with cystic fibrosis falling in love, from screenwriter Travis Flores' script Three Feet Distance. The case was settled in 2022 and Baldoni has not spoken about the situation publicly. Flores died in 2024. The legal threshold for plagiarism — especially in film and television — is quite high, even if someone is able to prove that the accused had access to an original work like a script. That's because ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted — only the specific expression of an idea, such as the exact script or dialogue. This means that two people can have very similar story concepts without it being considered theft, as long as the execution is different. And it's not unusual for similar films and TV shows to come out at almost the same time. The romantic comedies Friends With Benefits and No Strings Attached, about friends who fall for one another after promising to stay emotionally uninvolved, both hit theaters in 2011. On the TV side, The Wilds and Yellowjackets — which debuted less than a year apart, in 2020 and 2021, respectively — both centered on teen girls who must survive the wilderness after a plane crash. Solve the daily Crossword
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Alison Brie and Dave Franco put on a loved-up display as they dance and pose for cosy snaps at the premiere of their new horror film Together in LA
Alison Brie and Dave Franco cosied up on the red carpet at the premiere of their new horror film Together, held at the Vista Theatre in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The married couple put on an animated display as they shared a sweet embrace before dancing together. Alison, 42, showed off her incredible figure in a strapless red midi dress, while elevating her height in metallic stilettos. Meanwhile Dave, 40, cut a dapper figure in a grey suit, teamed with a black shirt and shiny dress shoes. Together is a 2025 supernatural body horror film written and directed by Michael Shanks, in his directorial debut. Alison and Dave play a couple who move to the countryside but find themselves encountering a mysterious force that horrifically causes changes in their bodies. Alison Brie and Dave Franco cosied up on the red carpet at the premiere of their new horror film Together, held at the Vista Theatre in Los Angeles on Wednesday The married couple put on an animated display as they shared a sweet embrace before dancing together The synopsis reads: 'Years into their relationship, Tim and Millie (Franco and Brie) find themselves at a crossroads as they move to the country, abandoning all that is familiar in their lives except each other. 'With tensions already flaring, a nightmarish encounter with a mysterious, unnatural force threatens to corrupt their lives, their love, and their flesh. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about their latest fright flick, Brie explained: 'Both of us have done intimate scenes with other actors, of course, but without giving too much away, a lot of this film requires close proximity from its two leads to a greater extent than anything I've done before. 'I think we pretty much finished every day of shooting and said to one another, "I don't know how you could make this movie without a real-life couple because of some of the situations we found ourselves in."' 'The movie explores codependency and it's something that we don't necessarily think is a good or bad thing; there are levels to it,' Dave explained. The couple first met at a New Orleans Mardi Gras party in 2011, and they started officially dating in 2012. They got engaged in August 2015 and tied the knot in March 2017, with Brie stating in an interview that year that she did not want to have children. Dave previously shared: 'Because we are married, and we work together constantly, I think we definitely could be defined as codependent. But we try to maintain a healthy relationship. They then playfully posed for snaps with a fake chainsaw Alison, 42, showed off her incredible figure in a strapless red midi dress, while elevating her height in metallic stilettos Meanwhile Dave, 40, cut a dapper figure in a grey suit, teamed with a black shirt and shiny dress shoes Alison delighted fans by signing autographs before the event Alison and Dave play a couple who move to the countryside but find themselves encountering a mysterious force that horrifically causes changes in their bodies Mariana Medina put on a very busty display in a plunging burgundy gown Scout LaRue Willis opted for an eye-catching blue and pink patterned jacket, teamed with beige trousers Nemi Brooks looked chic in a navy halter neck midi dress CJ Perry looked sensational in a figure-hugging brown dress 'Also, because of the fact that certain jobs take us away from each other for long periods of time, we are forced to also be more independent.' The happy couple is coming off their first collaboration together as co-writers, penning Somebody I Used to Know, which debuted this year on Prime Video. Franco directed the film from a script he co-wrote with Brie, who stars as Ally, a woman who returns to her hometown and re-connects with her ex (Jay Ellis). They both have plenty of writing experience under their belts, with Franco penning a number of short films including 2015's Dream Girl which he starred in with Brie. He also wrote his directorial debut, 2020's The Rental with Joe Swanberg and Mike Demski as well. Brie co-wrote and starred in a pair of films for director Jeff Baena, 2020's Horse Girl and 2022's Spin Me Round.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Did Dave Franco and Alison Brie's new horror flick ‘Together' rip off another movie? Here's what both sides are saying.
In a copyright lawsuit, the producers of "Better Half" claim that the premise of "Together" was stolen from their 2022 romantic comedy. Filmmaker Michael Shanks's debut feature Together is one of the most anticipated horror films of the summer — but it's not without controversy. The Sundance Film Festival darling — it sold for a reported $17 million to distributor Neon following a bidding war — stars real-life husband and wife Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a married couple whose vacation takes a turn when (spoiler alert!) a supernatural force causes their bodies to merge. It's a funny, albeit terrifying premise — and one that another production company alleges was stolen from its film, Better Half. Shanks, as well as the talent agency behind the Together team, deny the allegations. But that hasn't stopped people from talking about whether Together is really a rip-off. With Together heading to theaters on July 30, here's an explainer of the drama. What is the team alleging? Back in May, producers of the indie movie Better Half, Jess Jacklin and Charles Beale, filed a lawsuit against the producers of Together, alleging copyright infringement. (Better Half was written and directed by Patrick Henry Phelan, however, Jacklin and Beale's production company, StudioFest, is the only plaintiff named in the suit.) According to an article in Entertainment Weekly, Jacklin and Beale claim that the makers of Together stole the concept of Better Half, in which a couple 'wake up to find their bodies physically fused together as a metaphor for codependency.' While the main characters in Together are married and in Better Half they are strangers who just had a one night stand, both films show how the couple at the center 'navigate daily life as their physical attachment progresses and they start to control each other's body parts,' per the lawsuit. The suit also notes that both couples attempt to use chainsaws to separate themselves from one another. The Better Half producers also note a number of other details that the movies share, including a reference to the Spice Girls, the professions of the main characters and bathroom scenes in which both couples attempt to hide their intertwined condition from a third party. According to the suit, the films also include references to Plato's Symposium, which dissects the meaning and significance of love. The Better Half team also claims that Franco's and Brie's agents at WME were sent a copy of the script for Better Half in 2020, but they ultimately passed on the project. It's worth noting that while Together is described as a horror movie, Better Half is billed as a romantic comedy. The Brooklyn Film Festival, where Better Half premiered in 2022, features following description for the film on its website: 'According to Greek mythology, humans were once two-faced, four-armed, four-legged creatures, until Zeus split us in two, leaving us in an endless search for our other halves. Fast forward to modern day: Arturo, a hopeless romantic in search of true love, and Daphne, a serial polygamist allergic to commitment, meet for what should be a one-night stand, and quite literally find their other half when their bodies fuse during sex. The haphazard journey to come undone might just reveal what they'd been missing all along.' Better Half appears not to have received distribution after its festival run and is unable to be viewed online at this point in time. What the team has said WME, the talent agency representing Franco, Brie and filmmaker Shanks, has vehemently denied the Better Half allegations. Speaking to IndieWire, a spokesperson for WME stated, 'This lawsuit is frivolous and without merit. The facts in this case are clear and we plan to vigorously defend ourselves.' In a joint statement on June 18, Neon and WME alleged that the plaintiffs are doing 'nothing more than drumming up 15 minutes of fame for a failed project, demonstrated by the fact they contacted the press before filing their lawsuit, and did so without doing the most basic due diligence.' They accused Jacklin and Beale of searching for a payday by making waves in the press. 'We look forward to presenting our case in court,' they said. That same day, Shanks, who wrote and directed Together, shared his own statement on Neon's Instagram and X accounts, calling the accusations 'devastating.' He said Together came from a 'deeply personal' place as, like Franco's and Brie's characters, Shanks said he is in a long-term relationship, and that his own experience of the 'entanglement of identity, love, and codependence' is what inspired Together. 'Tim's story, his love for Millie, his relationship to his family, his relationship to unfulfilled ambitions as a musician, is completely rooted in my own personal life,' Shanks said in his statement. 'I lost my father at a young age in the same way our main character does, his trauma is rooted in my own. To have this called into question is not only deeply upsetting but entirely untrue.' Shanks also stated that he completed and registered the first draft of Together in 2019 — before Better Half was sent to Franco's team at WME — and began developing it with Screen Australia in 2020. Franco came onboard in 2022 after meeting with Shanks, and Brie, Franco's real-life wife, joined the project shortly after. 'To now be accused of stealing this story — one so deeply based on my own lived experience, one I've developed over the course of several years — is devastating and has taken a heavy toll,' Shanks said. Is it common for movies to be accused of plagiarism? Plagiarism accusations occur fairly often in Hollywood, and they occasionally receive a lot of attention. Last year, the Alexander Payne film The Holdovers was accused of stealing elements of Simon Stephenson's script Frisco, which was on the 2013 Blacklist of the most popular scripts circulating in the industry. Stephenson filed a complaint with the Writers Guild of America, which said it was not within the scope of the organization to handle. In the case of Frisco and The Holdovers, both scripts are available online, allowing people to make their own judgments on social media about the similarities — with many saying the scripts were too different to make plagiarism claims. Payne, who directed The Holdovers from a script written by David Hemingson, spoke at the Sarajevo Film Festival in August 2024 about the situation. Payne claimed there was no merit to the plagiarism allegations, which never materialized into a lawsuit. 'I didn't even pay attention to it because kooky accusations come out of the woodwork all of the time and this didn't even bother me but then it kind of kept coming, I thought, 'Well, that's dumb,'' Payne said, according to Deadline. Filmmaker and actor Justin Baldoni was also accused of plagiarizing his 2019 directorial debut Five Feet Apart, about teenagers with cystic fibrosis falling in love, from screenwriter Travis Flores' script Three Feet Distance. The case was settled in 2022 and Baldoni has not spoken about the situation publicly. Flores died in 2024. The legal threshold for plagiarism — especially in film and television — is quite high, even if someone is able to prove that the accused had access to an original work like a script. That's because ideas themselves cannot be copyrighted — only the specific expression of an idea, such as the exact script or dialogue. This means that two people can have very similar story concepts without it being considered theft, as long as the execution is different. And it's not unusual for similar films and TV shows to come out at almost the same time. The romantic comedies Friends With Benefits and No Strings Attached, about friends who fall for one another after promising to stay emotionally uninvolved, both hit theaters in 2011. On the TV side, The Wilds and Yellowjackets — which debuted less than a year apart, in 2020 and 2021, respectively — both centered on teen girls who must survive the wilderness after a plane crash. Solve the daily Crossword
