Let’s Have a David Cronenberg Summer!

Charli XCX agrees: Brat Summer is so 2024. During her performance on the second weekend of Coachella, she unveiled a selection of alternatives for those looking for an artistic and achingly cool way to celebrate the best season. She saluted some of her favourite musicians by shouting out Lorde Summer and Ethel Cain Summer, then threw some cinematic legends and rising auteurs into the party: Ari Aster Summer, Celine Song Summer, PTA Summer, and David Cronenberg Summer.

thank you Charli xcx, yes, I will be having a Cronenberg summer

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— Crash (1996) enjoyer (@timconspicuous.neocities.org) April 20, 2025 at 1:45 PM

Cronenberg, Canada’s grandfather and the king of body horror, is celebrating the release of his latest film, The Shrouds. The 82-year-old has been posing for Interview, chatting to Jim Jarmusch, and getting very candid about the death of his wife, which inspired his newest drama. In The Shrouds, which our own Lindsay absolutely loved, a man mourns the passing of his wife. Karsh (Vincent Cassel, styled to look not unlike his director) invents GraveTech, a form of surveillance technology that allows the living to monitor the slowly decomposing corpses of their loved ones. Karsh’s controversial creation becomes embroiled in conspiracy and tech paranoia after several graves are targeted by vandals.

Reviews have been strong, certainly more so now than the oddly tepid reception it received upon its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Some saw it as a lesser effort from the director, a more talky drama that wasn’t a display of the filmmaker at his peak strength. That narrative seems to have changed, at least among North American critics like our own Canadian. In his four-star review for Roger Ebert dot com, Matt Zoller Seitz heralded the film’s ‘darkly fantastical imagery’ and Cronenberg’s unique vision in depicting the universality of grief with ‘singular nerve and bluntness.’ Maybe a meta exploration of death and conspiracy isn’t everyone’s ideal way to spend the season. Shouldn’t we crave escapism? What was Brat Summer if not a chance to unleash our inner revelry and irony-laden f*ck-it fury towards a failing system? But maybe Cronenberg Summer is the uniting force that shall save us from the current hellscape.

David Cronenberg’s work is so distinct and so highly influential on the decades of filmmakers who followed in his footsteps that he inspired a namesake adjective: Cronenbergian. It typically pertains to depictions of body horror so visceral that they make even the strongest of stomachs churn. Think of the head exploring in Scanners, Jeff Goldblum picking off his fingernails in The Fly, or James Woods’ hand melding with a gun in Videodrome. Cronenberg is seen as a man obsessed with the ways in which our bodies deceive or fail us, which is not an inaccurate description of his work, but it is reductive.

In an interview, Cronenberg said, ‘When you’re a filmmaker, what do you film? You film the bodies of your actors. That’s the subject […] People say, “Why are you obsessed with bodies?” But I think, speaking as a filmmaker, every filmmaker is obsessed with the body, and most sculptors and most painters are also obsessed with the body, because that’s your subject. If you’re dealing with the human condition, you must begin with the human body.’

But you can see why a Cronenberg Summer and the endless fascination of body horror would feel right at home in 2025. Cronenberg Summer feels like the much-needed follow-up to last year’s riotous success of The Substance, a film that would not exist without the historical framework of the Cronenbergian. Coralie Fargeat’s uber-grotesque satire was the unexpected hit of 2024, a subtle-as-a-hammer horror comedy that turned the ceaseless hell of self-hatred and misogyny into an oversaturated glut of blood, boobs, and chicken drumsticks. Its pitch-black humour and moments of fatalism felt very true to the work of Cronenberg, which has always been both funnier and more depressing than it’s often given credit for. In The Substance, the degradation of Elisabeth/Sue felt strangely cathartic, as though it exemplified a societal frustration regarding sexism, ageism, and the inescapable tedium of patriarchy. Embrace the monster, be free, if only for a moment, and/or die. What could be more Cronenbergian than that?

There is more going on in the mind of Toronto’s finest, of course. His is a filmography fascinated by power, by family, and, yes, by beauty. Bodies are just the most malleable way for him to delve into his interests. In The Brood, the trauma of divorce splinters into a battle of the sexes with a primal physical manifestation. Dead Ringers is all about co-dependency and abuses of power through one of the most invasive areas of medicine. Naked Lunch, still the best Burroughs adaptation we have, blends sci-fi, noir, and horror to convey the descent into tota fantasy elicited by addiction. In A History of Violence, a film often seen as ‘unCronenbergian’, a man’s flipping between homey father and ruthless murderer is a gut punch to characters and viewers alike (made all the more discomfiting by one of the most notorious sex scenes of the 2000s.) For a man with a distinct style, he’s got incredible scope that goes well beyond the tropes he redefined.

Maybe a David Cronenberg Summer isn’t what we want but it’s certainly what we need. Immersing ourselves in stories of viscera, repulsion, and annihilation doesn’t have to be hopeless. As films like Scanners, Videodrome, and Crimes of the Future show us, there’s a form of liberation to be found in embracing one’s inner grotesqueries. It need not be fatalistic, although many Cronenberg films are often operatic in their descent into tragedy (hello, The Fly.) If the world thinks you’re a beastly deviation then let them know just how much fun that can be (this could also apply to those looking for a John Waters Summer.)

Plus, there’s one particular benefit to a Cronenberg Summer: embracing a beloved storyteller who doesn’t hate trans people. You know who effing loves trans readings of his work? This guy! In a 2022 interview with Vulture, when asked about whether Crimes of the Future was deliberately engaging with ‘ongoing conversations about the transgender movement’, he said, ‘Yeah, well, I observe it. I’m not really engaged with it directly. They’re taking that idea seriously. They’re saying, “Body is reality. I want to change my reality. That means I have to change my body.” And they’re being very brave and they’re investing a lot in these changes, especially these ones that are not reversible, which most of them aren’t. I say, go ahead. This is an artist giving their all to their art.’ The Mugwumps say Trans Rights!

So, this Summer, cast off your lime green hats. Long live the new flesh. Join the brood.

Monster dads Clive Barker and David Cronenberg say trans rights.

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— Kayleigh Donaldson (@ceilidhann.bsky.social) April 18, 2025 at 11:43 AM