The Shrouds had its world premiere in Main Competition section of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2024. The film is scheduled to be released theatrically in France by Pyramide Distribution on January 22, 2025.
Premise
Karsh, 50, is a prominent businessman. Inconsolable since the death of his wife, he invents GraveTech, revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor their dear departed's corpses as they decay in their shrouds. One night, multiple graves, including that of Karsh’s wife, are desecrated. Karsh sets out to track down the perpetrators.[4]
The concept was originally envisaged as a television series for Netflix, with Cronenberg writing two episodes before the plans were cancelled by Netflix.[5]
Saïd Ben Saïd and Martin Katz produced the film for Prospero Pictures and SBS International alongside co-producer Steve Solomos. The cinematographer Douglas Koch worked alongside art director Jason Clarke and production designer Carol Spier and costume designer Anne Dixon.[6]
In an interview, Cronenberg described the film as very "personal" and "autobiographical".[7][8] It is directly inspired by his own grief at the loss of his wife, Carolyn, who died in 2017.[9]
The film was originally set to be released theatrically in France by Pyramide Distribution on January 29, 2025, but the release date was pushed forward to January 22, 2025.[20] Sideshow and Janus Films will release the film in the United States.[21]
Reception
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Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 75% of 51 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Ruminating on the love within loss, The Shrouds is a personal and peculiar examination of grief by director David Cronenberg."[2]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 59 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[1]