Dave Franco and Alison Brie Knew They’d Either Be Divorced or ‘More Codependent Than Ever’ After Their Relationship Body Horror ‘Together’
Instantly the buzziest Midnight entry at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival after a raucous, packed premiere at the Eccles, “Together” puts real-life couple Alison Brie and Dave Franco through the emotional and physical wringer. Written and directed by Michael Shanks as a body-horror satire of his own relationship to relationships — specifically a long-term one with his own partner — the skin-crawling, not-for-the-squeamish indie tars Brie and Franco as spouses who give a whole new, grotesque meaning to the idea of codependency.
In the film, Tim (Franco) and Millie (Brie) relocate from the city to the countryside after she takes a new job teaching at an elementary school. Once there, a mysterious cave in the woods reveals a supernatural water source that draws them closer together — and in Lovecraftian body-horror terms.
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Shanks, Brie, and Franco joined the IndieWire Studio presented by Dropbox at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival to talk about their new film — starting with whether or not the buzzed-about horror title (which features plenty of sex, contorted limbs, and crawling skin) tested Brie and Franco’s actual marriage.
“I think we thought it might [test our relationship] more than it did,” Brie said. “We went into knowing that because of the intimate nature of the film and how much time we’d be spending together, even though we’ve worked together before, Dave likes to say we would come out of it either getting divorced or becoming more codependent than ever.”
“It was the latter,” said Franco, who previously directed Brie in the horror movie “The Rental” and the 2023 romance “Somebody I Used to Know.” “This was like the most full-on thing we’ve ever done together. We’re very picky about what we choose to do, especially when we’re onscreen together, just because we don’t want to burn people out on us.”
“Or have it be distracting,” Brie said. “The fact that we’re a real-life couple fuels the viewer’s experience watching it.”
Franco pointed out that the production, which shot in Melbourne despite being set in New York state, had just 21 days. “Every single day, there was either a heavy prosthetic or really intense stunt sequences. We had to go in knowing that we were probably going to only get one or two takes per setup,” Franco said.
Did the actors struggle to separate their personal and professional lives, going to a set and going home together? “No. Luckily our relationship is much healthier than the couple in the movies, so it wasn’t difficult to leave their relationship on set,” Brie said.
Franco added, “When we’re on location for this movie, we really do live and breathe it, and we’re OK with the movie being our life. But when we’re home and writing something together, we need to put boundaries so we’re not only talking about work.”
“And when he says ‘we’ need to put up boundaries, he means ‘I’ need to put up boundaries because David would just keep writing any second of the day, brushing our teeth, about to fall asleep.”
“Together” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently looking for U.S. distribution.
Dropbox is proud to partner with IndieWire and the Sundance Film Festival. In 2025, 68% of feature films premiering at the Sundance Film Festival used Dropbox in their film production. Dropbox helps filmmakers and creative teams find, organize, and secure all the files that are important to any project.
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