Ahead of its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival next week, the first teaser trailer for David Cronenberg's The Shrouds has been released online.
The footage doesn't give us very much to go on, basically just serving as an introduction to Vincent Cassel's Karsh, "an innovative businessman and grieving widower, builds a novel device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. This burial tool installed at his own state-of-the-art – though controversial cemetery allows him and his clients to watch their specific departed loved one decompose in real time."
“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,” Cronenberg tells Variety. “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.”
He adds, “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. 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.”
Another on brand quote from the body horror maestro!
Check out the teaser below along with a recent poster, and let us know what you think in the comments section.
The Shrouds will see the return of several Cronenberg collaborators, including cinematographer Douglas Koch, editor Christopher Donaldson, and composer Howard Shore.
Crimes of the Future proved to be highly divisive (as much of Cronenberg's work often does), so expect similar reactions from Cannes when The Shrouds premieres at Cannes.
The 77th annual Cannes Film Festival will take place from 14 to 25 May. Greta Gerwig will serve as jury president for the main competition, while actress Camille Cottin will host the opening and closing ceremonies.