Movies
Criterion Channel Spotlights Director David Cronenberg in April
Next month brings the release of The Shrouds, the latest from legendary filmmaker David Cronenberg. The Criterion Channel is celebrating accordingly with a director’s spotlight of his audacious work.
Cronenberg’s The Shrouds will open on April 18 in New York and Los Angeles, before expanding nationwide on April 25, 2025. But you can begin streaming the “Directed by David Cronenberg” titles on Criterion Channel beginning April 1.
The programming selection includes a mix of classic Cronenberg body horror and underseen gems, including racing action movie Fast Company and early sci-fi works. The programming section includes the Criterion Collection Edition of Dead Ringers, in which Jeremy Irons delivers a impressive double performance as twin gynecologists who spiral into a into a dizzying madness exacerbated by drugs and sexual confusion. It’ll include an audio commentary by director David Cronenberg, Irons, and other crew members as well as other supplemental materials.
Read on for the full director’s spotlight details and lineup.
“Gooey, splattery, fleshy nightmares of contagion and transformation, the audacious cinematic transgressions of David Cronenberg—whose latest film, The Shrouds, infects theaters this April—are not so much watched as experienced in a visceral, full-body wave of can’t-look-away revulsion and fascination. These definitive body-horror classics—including the killer-kiddo shocker The Brood, his head-exploding commercial breakthrough Scanners, and the doubly diabolical psychological puzzle Dead Ringers—suggest that perhaps nothing is more terrifying than our own selves.”
Stereo, 1969
Crimes of the Future, 1970
Rabid, 1977
The Brood, 1979
Fast Company, 1979
Scanners, 1981
Dead Ringers, 1988
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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