After seeing Together, I think I can confidently proclaim that we have entered a golden era for body horror movies. Following acclaimed, grotesque recent releases like the Oscar-winning The Substance and Shudder’s The Ugly Stepsister, writer and director Michael Shanks’ insane new horror movie about a mysterious force threatening to bond a struggling couple’s flesh together reinforces my faith in a subgenre I have always been cautiously curious about.
Said couple from the 2025 movie release is played by real-life husband and wife Dave Franco and Alison Brie, who also produce Together, but actually previously collaborated on another horror flick from several years ago that I had always been curious to check out. It turned out to be yet another example of a movie that I regret not giving a chance sooner, and one I would recommend to any horror fan who enjoys Franco and Brie’s work in Together – which we reviewed well – but, mostly, for different reasons. Allow me to explain, WITHOUT SPOILERS…
The Rental Is An Unsettling Vacation Thriller
The movie in question is 2020’s The Rental – the directorial debut of Dave Franco, who also co-produces and co-writes with Joe Swanberg, who is known for the found footage horror favorite V/H/S and the insane home invasion thriller, You’re Next. Franco does not appear in the film, but it does star his spouse, Alison Brie, alongside underrated Scream King Dan Stevens, future Emmy-winning The Bear star Jeremy Allen White, and Sheila Vand of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night fame as two couples spending a weekend away at a vacation rental home that soon proves to be a nightmare of life-changing and life-threatening proportions.
For his first feature, Franco proves to have a competent handle on crafting a strong slow-burn horror movie with The Rental (available with a Shudder subscription), with its ominous pacing and excellent character-driven suspense, elevated by a cast that captures their roles’ desperation perfectly. While not quite as original in concept, I would go so far as to call this a more haunting tale of Airbnb horror than 2022’s Barbarian, as it depicts a more frighteningly grounded situation and is portrayed in such harrowing and heartbreaking ways that I might now be convinced to only use hotels for the rest of my life.
The Rental Boasts A Few Similarities To Together
While Together is a supernatural thriller and dramatically different in tone, I noticed a few ways that it does relate to The Rental, outside of the involvement of Franco and Brie. Most notably, both films incorporate troubled romance and codependency as prevalent themes, as each of the main couples in the film is threatened by secrets that develop from either repressed dissatisfaction or a lack of self-assurance. These details have no allegorical connection to the film’s more overtly horrific moments, unlike what Together achieves with its body horror elements, but they would prove to be even more heart-wrenching in some respects.
Also, both films prove to me that Franco and Brie, as a creative team, are not above using domesticated animals to tug at your heartstrings. Together’s opening sequence, without giving too much away, involves two dogs experiencing a very disturbing situation, and there is also a dog in The Rental, named Reggie, who proves to be a potent source of trauma in the story when he suddenly goes missing. I will just say, his ultimate fate is nothing to be too worried about, especially when compared to the poor pooches in Together, but I felt I should warn pet lovers about the suspense that comes with his absence.
I have heard very little about The Rental since it came out, but I hope to see its popularity surge following the release of Together. If you have yet to see it and you have Shudder, I recommend you stream it, or even rent it on Amazon. You might end up agreeing with me that it is one of the best horror movies you waited too long to see.