David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds finally gets release date, new teaser

After the better part of a year on the festival circuit, the latest David Cronenberg picture is finally becoming available for everyone else. Well, almost. Sideshow and Janus Films announced this morning that The Shrouds will open in New York and Los Angeles on April 18, followed by a nationwide release on April 25. The distributors also shared a new—albeit very brief—teaser of the film, which you can check out below. 



The Shrouds premiered at Cannes in May, and follows Karsh (Vincent Kassel), a businessman distraught after the death of his wife. Per the film’s logline, “he invents GraveTech, a revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor their dear departed in their shrouds.” As Cronenberg has said, the film was partially inspired by losing his wife of 43 years, Carolyn, in 2017, but he sounded (understandably) less than interested in sharing too much about that. “[T]he fact that it might have personal meaning to me and that there might be some lines of dialogue that came from my actual experience of life doesn’t therefore make it a good movie. The movie has to stand on its own,” he told Variety in May. Later, he added, “I don’t really think of art as therapy.” 

The film has had a bit of a convoluted path to the screen. The Shrouds was originally conceived as a Netflix series, but they decided to tap out after reading two of Cronenberg’s episodes. “I had been hoping that Netflix was not as Hollywood as Hollywood,” the director said in the same interview. (Join the club.) Regardless, what Cronenberg did produce has been well-received. Writing for The A.V. Club at Cannes, critic Jason Gorber opined in his B+ review, “For even a minor Cronenberg film is, by any measure, a major work, one most certainly worth reflecting upon before dismissing too readily, or too eagerly.”