David Cronenberg’s come­back con­tin­ues as he sets up a death­ly drama

We’re mere days away from the grand return of David Cro­nen­berg after near­ly a decade away from film­mak­ing, and a much longer hia­tus from the domain of body-hor­ror that he made his king­dom. But even those look­ing at the upcom­ing Crimes of the Future as a one-last-ride sit­u­a­tion allow­ing the film­mak­er to go out in a blaze of glo­ry weren’t dream­ing big enough — Canada’s pre­mier sicko is back and he’s here to stay.

A report from Vari­ety post­ed just this morn­ing announced that the wheels have already begun a‑turning on anoth­er new fea­ture from Cro­nen­berg, revealed to be titled The Shrouds. Pack­aged for sale at the mar­ket in Cannes next week, the psy­chodra­ma has a sci-fi hook unmis­tak­able as any­one else’s brand of dement­ed inspi­ra­tion — and bet­ter still, it’s already got a lead­ing man in Vin­cent Cas­sel.

He’ll reunite with the direc­tor (they pre­vi­ous­ly worked togeth­er on East­ern Promis­es and A His­to­ry of Vio­lence) to por­tray a busi­ness­man and wid­ow­er, two aspects mar­ried in his great­est entre­pre­neur­ial endeav­or yet: a device that per­mits the liv­ing to speak to the dead from beyond the veil of mor­tal­i­ty. The set­up is right at home amongst Cronenberg’s gallery of ghast­ly inven­tions, from the unnat­u­ral­ly vis­cer­al vir­tu­al-real­i­ty of eXis­tenZ to the cus­tom-made gyne­co­log­i­cal tools of Dead Ringers.

But that’s just the begin­ning, per the offi­cial log­line pro­vid­ed by Vari­ety: ​“Karsh’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary busi­ness is on the verge of break­ing into the inter­na­tion­al main­stream when sev­er­al graves with­in his ceme­tery are van­dal­ized and near­ly destroyed, includ­ing that of his wife. While he strug­gles to uncov­er a clear motive for the attack, the mys­tery of who wrought this hav­oc, and why, will dri­ve Karsh to reeval­u­ate his busi­ness, mar­riage and fideli­ty to his late wife’s mem­o­ry, as well as push him to new beginnings.”

Cro­nen­berg hopes to begin shoot­ing in spring of 2023, short­ly after Crimes of the Future has won every sin­gle Oscar and a few new­ly invent­ed just for the occa­sion (pre­sum­ably). Until then, it’s just heart­en­ing to see that he’s back-back in the director’s chair where he belongs, for good.