David Cronenberg delivers an entirely new take on body horror, reinventing the game yet again with his new film The Shrouds. This dramatic sci-fi thriller is a reflective stunner that combines the maestro’s signature body horror with profound elder-statesman reflection. Entering his 80s, Cronenberg (The Fly, Dead Ringers, History of Violence) continues to find new ways to innovate what can be done with bodies in cinema, losing none of his edge while demonstrating a true sense of empathy; the result is a film that astonishes while also being his most accessible film since Eastern Promises. 

In an eerie, deceptively placid near-future, a techno-entrepreneur named Karsh (Vincent Cassel) has developed a new software that will allow the bereaved to bear witness to the gradual decay of loved ones dead and buried in the earth. While Karsh is still reeling from the loss of his wife (Diane Kruger) from cancer—and falling into a peculiar sexual relationship with his wife’s sister (also Kruger)—a spate of vandalized graves utilizing his “shroud” technology begins to put his enterprise at risk, leading him to uncover a potentially vast conspiracy.

We are concluding our four month David Lynch retrospective by presenting The Elephant Man, his haunting sophomore feature, now in a breathtaking new 4K restoration from Paramount Pictures. One of the most emotionally resonant and visually arresting films of the 20th century, this is the perfect way to pay our final tributes.

Shot in stark, luminous black-and-white by the legendary Freddie Francis, and produced by Mel Brooks (yes, that Mel Brooks), this Victorian-era tragedy tells the true story of John Merrick (An unforgettable John Hurt), a severely deformed man exploited in a freak show before being taken under the wing of a sympathetic surgeon, Dr. Frederick Treves (a quietly commanding Anthony Hopkins). What follows is a delicate, devastating exploration of what it means to be human in a society obsessed with appearances.

With The Elephant Man, Lynch (Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive) stepped into the mainstream without sacrificing a shred of his uncanny sensibility—crafting a deeply compassionate portrait of otherness that still stuns over four decades later.

Join us on May 3rd as we screen Tinsman Road, the second film from writer/director Robbie Banfitch (The Outwaters). And stick around after the screening for a Q&A with the director! 

Shot fully on gritty 4:3 Mini-DV, Banfitch’s sophomore feature takes us on a raw, emotionally-winding voyage into the wilderness of death and sorrow. The story centers on a young man as he navigates the serpentine mystery surrounding his missing sister and their family home.

Starring Robbie Banfitch, his real-life mother Leslie Ann Banfitch, Salem Belladonna, Heather Middleton, Nancy Bujnowski, Noelle Faccone, David Fekety and Keith Bixby.

Our A24orror series has earned itself another encore. This time, Climax, a rollercoaster of dance and anxiety, where the boundaries between party fun and full-blown nightmare collide.

When members of a dance troupe are lured to an empty school, drug-laced sangria causes their jubilant rehearsal to descend into a dark and explosive nightmare as they try to survive the night–and find out who’s responsible before it’s too late.

Climax takes you to a wild dance party that spirals straight into madness. Gaspar Noé’s visceral direction puts you right in the middle of the action as the dancers, high on LSD, descend into an all-out frenzy of delirium, violence, and emotional collapse. Feverish, disorienting, and terrifying all while being kind of fun? This one was meant to be played big and loud at the The Frida Cinema.

Our 21st Century Cult series dives headfirst into psychological horror and comes out with one of the most claustrophobic, nerve-shredding films of the 2000s—Bug. Adapted from Tracy Letts’ stage play (he also wrote the screenplay), this fevered two-hander finds director William Friedkin (The French Connection, The Exorcist, Sorcerer, To Live and Die in L.A.) stripping things down to the bone: one motel room, two broken people, and a mounting delusion that morphs into full-blown apocalypse.

Ashley Judd gives a career-best performance as Agnes, a lonely, traumatized waitress holed up in a cheap Oklahoma motel. When she meets Peter (an always-electrifying Michael Shannon), a drifter with a haunted past and a theory about government-implanted bugs living under his skin, the two fall into a spiral of shared madness. What begins as a strange romance rapidly mutates into something terrifying, intimate, and hallucinatory—culminating in an operatic crescendo of love, paranoia, and self-immolation.