The Rental: Alison Brie Shares Praise for Dave Franco's Script
The Rental is not only Dave Franco’s first feature film in the director’s chair, but also his first time penning a screenplay. The movie, which will premiere on July 24, follows two couples who decide to rent an Airbnb together for a weekend getaway only to find their personal entanglements give way to true horror. As was previously revealed in the trailer, the story is an interesting exploration of voyeurism and personal boundaries, and is set against an eerily timely backdrop of both physical isolation and technological connectivity.
While Franco does not star in The Rental himself, his wife Alison Brie does. She is joined by a powerful cast comprised of Dan Stevens (Eurovision Song Contest), Sheila Vand (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night), and Jeremy Allen White (Shameless) – but only she had the advantage of being part of the project since day one.
Except Brie wasn’t aware just how involved she would be in the project from the start. During a Q&A session after The Rental’s drive-in theater premiere at Vineland Drive-in pop-up experience on June 18, the actress revealed her initial reaction to the script her husband was co-writing with Joe Swanberg (Netflix’s Easy):
“Well, it was so fun to be a part of the process from early on, while Dave was writing it. Not knowing that I was going to be in it, I got to just read it as this thing that my husband was writing. At every stage it was riveting, but it just got better and better, and clearer and clearer, what he was trying to do – which was turn the genre around on its head a little bit and really invest in the characters, and get you into their story before it sort of turned into this slasher film. And every time I read a new draft; it blew my mind.”
Her extremely positive appraisal of the story only grew with the finished product, which she primarily credited to the strength of the four main characters. Her protagonist, Michelle, has been married Charlie (Stevens) for several years yet has to share him with his creative work partner Mina (Vand). Meanwhile, Mina has recently begun dating Charlie's brother Josh (Allen White) while still fighting her attraction to her coworker.
Naturally, putting all four in one house together for a weekend leads to a lot of layers being peeled back. Their poor decision-making alone would be enough to fill a 90-minute film, but then there is the added element of a mysterious killer ready to pick them off. Brie shared her thoughts on the viewing experience of The Rental as well during the Q&A, complimenting Franco’s skills by saying that:
“Every time I've seen it – even tonight, and I've already seen it a number of times - I was sitting in this car like, "No!" It takes you on such a journey, this movie. And I think when he asked me to play Michelle, I was so psyched because all of the characters in this movie are so rich and have so much going on. Even Michelle, who can be normally written as a regular Type A, wet blanket kind of character – and she's not. Although I do find her to be the moral compass of the film.”
It’s unclear whether audiences will be able to watch Alison Brie become the next scream queen in The Rental at traditional theaters come July 24, but it may prove equally creepy via the drive-in or at-home experiences. After all, according to Dave Franco’s directorial debut, nothing is scarier than being home and not knowing who is watching you.