‘The Shrouds’ Trailer: David Cronenberg Grapples With Grief In New Film
Do you remember the first time you watched a David Cronenberg movie? My first was The Brood—an underrated Cronenberg classic—and since then I’ve had a love for the master of melding the abject with the erotic. And he shows no sign of stopping, as his newest film, The Shrouds, is set to hit theaters this April. His latest is a meditation of love and loss in the digital age, with some conspiracy thrown in for good measure.
Read the film’s full synopsis below:
In an eerie, deceptively placid near-future, a techno-entrepreneur named Karsh has developed a new software that will allow the bereaved to bear witness to the gradual decay of loved ones dead and buried in the earth. While Karsh is still reeling from the loss of his wife from cancer—and falling into a peculiar sexual relationship with his wife’s sister—a spate of vandalized graves utilizing his “shroud” technology begins to put his enterprise at risk, leading him to uncover a potentially vast conspiracy.
Cronenberg wrote The Shrouds after the death of his wife, his own way of processing grief in the face of such monumental loss. This new film is perhaps his most personal, at least his most personal since the release of the aforementioned The Brood, which was inspired by Cronenberg’s divorce. With The Brood being a personal favorite, I wonder how The Shrouds will compare as a cinematic baring of the soul, a ripping open of the self for all to see.
The Shrouds had its world premiere at Cannes in 2024, where Dread Central’s Rory Doherty reviewed it for the site.
In his positive review, Doherty wrote,
“The Shrouds is a vulnerable and playful blend of tech conspiracy and body horror… [If] you’re drawn to just how off-kilter, eerily intimate, and darkly comic the past four Cronenberg films have been, The Shrouds invites us deeper into the fold, where questions about the ubiquity of AI, the psychology of xenophobic conspiracies, and our blind acceptance of the intersections of medicine and capital are posed in urgent, sardonic ways.”
Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce and Sandrine Holt star in the film. Cassel previously collaborated with Cronenberg in Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method. Now, he gets to tackle true Cronenberg genre territory as he brings Karsh to life.
The Shrouds comes to theaters in NY and LA on April 18, 2025, then opens nationwide on April 25, 2025.
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