'The Shrouds' Trailer Takes Viewers Beyond the Grave

Certain filmmakers tend to set themselves a filming and production schedule that centers the Cannes Film Festival as the main release of their movies. These filmmakers are usually the sort of artists who make esoteric fare, stuff that would never draw a Marvel-sized audience, and whose film successes are predicated on impressing this storied festival’s high-end critics and attendees. Among those who work that way is Canadian film director David Cronenberg, whose films could be categorized as “intellectual body horror,” which is not exactly an easy sell.

His newest film, The Shrouds, was first presented at the Cannes Market in May 2023 and premiered in competition at the 2024 Festival the following year. It features an international cast, including Canadians, Australians, Brits, Germans, and French actors. But, as usual, the subject matter makes Cronenberg’s films interesting. In this one, he weaves a science fiction tale set in the near future, where a grieving widower invents a way to visit the afterlife.

In an interview ahead of the Cannes premiere in May, Cronberg told Variety, “It’s so interesting because I’m often watching movies to see dead people. I want to see them again; I want to hear them. And so cinema is a kind of shrouded post-death machine, you know. In a way, cinema is a cemetery...If you’re a religious person, I think that you consider an afterlife. If you’re an atheist... that relationship can continue more biologically; it’s another form of relationship,” he explained. “It’s certainly perverse, morbid, grotesque, but to someone who’s grieving the way he is, it isn’t. It’s healthy, a way out of despair, out of grief.”