“Together,” a gory love story starring real-life husband and wife Dave Franco and Alison Brie, shook up audiences at its Sunday night premiere in Park City. The Sundance Midnight selection kept the packed audience hooting, hollering and yelling “Oh shit!” at many of the gory, surprising set pieces.
The film follows a couple, played by Franco and Brie, who move from the city to the country for her dream job. Following a chance encounter with something supernatural in the woods, they start experiencing a series of haunting and gross moments that are best not ruined here.
Suffice it to say it’s a film destined to play well with audiences, as the game actors balance nightmare fuel with big humorous beats, all while developing three-dimensional characters sometimes ignored in horror fare.
In a post-screening Q&A, writer and director Michael Shanks spoke about the importance of occasionally breaking tension in the film with humor.
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“When I started to write it, I wasn’t intending to make it a horror-comedy or anything,” he said. “But even on other things I’ve written, I just feel like these situations are so insane, and sometimes when I find I watch a horror or sci-fi, and there’s no sense of levity, that’s just not my experience of life. I’ve laughed at funerals, and in the darkest moments of life, there’s always humor, and the absurdity of things … it wouldn’t have worked for me if it was taking it deadly serious the whole time. Also, I just think it makes it more fun.”
“Together” is a Sundance sales title, through WME.