Ahead of its world premiere in Competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, today brings us the first teaser trailer for David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, a new film which stars Vincent Cassel as an inventor whose latest innovation lands him at the center of a haunting mystery.
Here’s how Variety recently described the film:
“The Shrouds centers on Karsh [Cassel], 50, a prominent businessman. Inconsolable since the death of his wife, he invents GraveTech, a revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor their dear departed in their shrouds. One night, multiple graves, including that of Karsh’s wife, are desecrated. Karsh sets out to track down the perpetrators.”
Yes, Vincent Cassel’s Karsh has figured out a way for people to remain partially in touch with their dead loved ones, and someone out there is none too happy about it (frankly, we wouldn’t be too psyched about watching our recently-deceased family members rot away in their graves, either, so we’re not sure who we should be rooting for here).
Now. Let’s check out that teaser…
Obviously, very little to go on here – it’s just a teaser, in the strictest sense of the word – but even still, you can feel the classic Cronenberg vibes radiating off this footage (side note: what a gift it is that Cronenberg is still regularly pumping out movies here in 2024; we probably don’t appreciate that fact enough). Looks a little less outwardly weird than 2022’s Crimes of the Future, sure, but that chilly remove and sense of watching insects (read: troubled characters) under glass is still firmly in place.
Variety recently spoke to the director about his latest mindfuck, and here’s what he had to say for himself:
“Most burial rituals are about avoiding the reality of death and the reality of what happens to a body. I would say that in our movie this is a reversal of the normal function of a shroud. Here, it is to reveal rather than to conceal.
I was writing this film while experiencing the grief of the loss of my wife, who died seven years ago. It was an exploration for me because it was not just a technical exercise, it was an emotional exercise.”
When asked whether the shrouds themselves might be a metaphor for cinema, Cronenberg told Variety:
“In a way, the shrouds that my main character has invented are cinematic devices. They are creating their own cinema, a post-death cinema, a cinema of decay. Before writing the script, I was aware that there was a cinematic aspect to the shrouds, creating their own strange grave cinema, cemetery cinema. In The Shrouds, there is a suggestion that Karsh understands that there is a cinematic technology involved in what he’s creating, something rich and complex.
“It’s so interesting because I’m often watching movies in order to see dead people. I want to see them again, I want to hear them. And so cinema is in a way a kind of shrouded post-death machine, you know. In a way cinema is a cemetery.”
That’s our DC! Always keeping things nice and light!
As mentioned up top, The Shrouds will premiere in Competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. In addition to Cassel, the film stars Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce and Sandrine Holt, and will also feature a score from Cronenberg’s longtime collaborator Howard Shore. It will premiere in theaters in France on September 25th, but does not appear to have a Stateside release date.
Head on over to Variety to hear more from Cronenberg about his latest feature, and do stay tuned for more on The Shrouds as further updates become available. We’re very excited about this one, folks!
