“How dark are you willing to go?” Is the question director David Cronenberg asks the audience in his latest body horror nightmare. The legendary filmmaker David Cronenberg takes us into the near future with his new movie The Shrouds, which will open in theaters this April from Sideshow and Janus Films.
Janus Films previews, “Written following the death of the director’s wife, the new film from David Cronenberg is a profoundly personal reckoning with grief and a descent into noir-tinged dystopia, set in an ominous world of self-driving cars, data theft, and A.I. personal assistants. Offering Cronenberg’s customary balance of malevolence and wit, The Shrouds is a sly and thought-provoking consideration of the corporeal and the digital, the mortal and the infinite.”
In the trailer, Vincent Cassel portrays Karsh, a tech entrepreneur struggling with the loss of his wife (Diane Kruger). “When they lowered my wife into the coffin, I had an intense urge to get into the box with her,” he confesses. Instead, he creates the next best thing: the titular Shrouds, an advanced burial system that allows loved ones to watch as the deceased’s body gradually decays in its grave. In coping with his wife’s death, he also begins a sexual relationship with her sister (also played by Diane Kruger).
When the Shrouds burial site is brutally desecrated, Karsh realizes this is more than an act of vandalism. A powerful force has sinister intentions for his groundbreaking technology. The trailer closes with Karsh wrapped in one of the Shrouds, contemplating whether it was truly designed for the living, the dead, or something else entirely.
About The Shrouds
Synopsis: 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.
Genre: Horror • Thriller
Director: David Cronenberg
Stars: Vincent Cassel • Diane Kruger • Guy Pearce • Sandrine Holt
Rating: R for Strong sexual content, graphic nudity, language and some violent content.
Run Time: 1 Hour 59 Minutes
Release Date: 25th April 2025
