Why So Blu?

Cronenberg, Del Toro, Lynch, and More Coming to The Criterion Collection October 2025

Coming in October from The Criterion Collection: A History of Violence, a provocative deconstruction of the American action hero from David Cronenberg; Deep Crimson, a deliriously perverse portrait of obsessive love, directed by Arturo Ripstein; Altered States, a mind-expanding cinematic head trip, directed by Ken Russell; and Nightmare Alley, Guillermo del Toro’s noirish vision of the world as a carnival of corruption. Plus: Eyes Without a Face, an influential horror masterpiece directed by Georges Franju, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, David Lynch’s resurrection of a tortured, enigmatic heroine—now on 4K UHD. And from Criterion Premieres: The Shrouds, Cronenberg’s heady thriller about grief, mortality, and love.

TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME

 

1992 • 135 minutes • Color • 7.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

In the town of Twin Peaks, everybody has their secrets—but no one more than Laura Palmer. In this prequel to his groundbreaking 1990s television series, David Lynch resurrects the teenager found wrapped in plastic at the beginning of the show, following her through the last week of her life and teasing out the enigmas that surround her murder. Homecoming queen by day and drug-addicted thrill seeker by night, Laura leads a double life that pulls her deeper and deeper into horror as she pieces together the identity of the assailant who has been terrorizing her for years. Nightmarish in its vision of an innocent torn apart by unfathomable forces, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is nevertheless one of Lynch’s most humane films, aching with compassion for its tortured heroine—a character as enthralling in life as she was in death.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K digital restoration, with 7.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, both supervised by director David Lynch
• Alternate original 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• The Missing Pieces, ninety minutes of deleted and alternate takes from the film, assembled by Lynch
• Interview by Lynch with actors Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, and Grace Zabriskie
• Interviews with Lee and composer Angelo Badalamenti
• Trailers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: Excerpts from an interview with Lynch from Lynch on Lynch, a 1997 book edited by filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley

Available October 7, 2025

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EYES WITHOUT A FACE

1960 • 90 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.66:1 aspect ratio 

At his secluded château in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor (Pierre Brasseur) attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore the beauty of his daughter’s disfigured countenance—at a horrifying price. Eyes Without a Face, directed by the supremely talented Georges Franju, is rare in horror cinema for its odd mixture of the ghastly and the lyrical, and it has been a major influence on the genre in the decades since its release. There are images here—of terror, of gore, of inexplicable beauty—that once seen are never forgotten.

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Blood of the Beasts, Georges Franju’s 1949 documentary about the slaughterhouses of Paris
• Archival interviews with Franju on the horror genre, cinema, and the making of Blood of the Beasts
• Interview with actor Edith Scob
• Excerpts from Les grand-pères du crime, a 1985 documentary about screenwriters Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac
• Trailers
• PLUS: Essays by novelist Patrick McGrath and film historian David Kalat

 

Available October 14, 2025

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A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

2005 • 96 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

In David Cronenberg’s subtly provocative film, all is not as it seems. In his first of many collaborations with the director, Viggo Mortensen delivers a highly nuanced performance as Tom Stall, a small-town husband and father who is hailed as a hero when he kills the would-be perpetrators of a violent robbery. But how did this ordinary family man dispatch them with such skill? Working with an exceptional cast that also includes Maria Bello, Ed Harris, and William Hurt, Cronenberg slyly deconstructs the mythos of the American action hero, posing elemental questions about identity, human nature, and the violence that we both abhor and can’t look away from.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Peter Suschitzky and approved by director David Cronenberg, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary featuring Cronenberg
• New interview with screenwriter Josh Olson, conducted by writer-producer Tom Bernardo
• Excerpts of Cronenberg and actor Viggo Mortensen in conversation at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival
• Acts of Violence, a documentary on the making of the film, featuring behind-the-scenes footage
• Three featurettes
• Deleted scene with commentary by Cronenberg
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Nathan Lee

 

Available October 21, 2025

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ALTERED STATES

1980 • 103 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

The ultimate cinematic head trip of the 1980s, British renegade Ken Russell’s first Hollywood film—adapted by the legendary screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky from his own novel—is part hallucinogenic freak-out, part gonzo creature feature, part transcendent love story, all played at a fever pitch. When researcher Eddie Jessup (William Hurt) begins using himself as a test subject for his mind-expanding psychological experiments, it sends him on an increasingly dangerous, substance-fueled odyssey from humankind’s primordial past to the outer limits of consciousness. It’s all visualized by Russell in a psychedelic supernova of out-there imagery that encompasses everything from the pagan to the cosmic sublime, culminating in a brain-wave-blasting battle between the mind and the heart.

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• Alternate 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• New audio commentary featuring film historian Samm Deighan
• Archival interviews with director Ken Russell and actor William Hurt
• New interview with special-visual-effects designer Bran Ferren
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Jessica Kiang

 

Available October 21, 2025

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THE SHROUDS

(PART OF CRITERION PREMIERES)

 

2024 • 119 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

 

Long fascinated by the ways that technology is transforming our bodies and minds, David Cronenberg returns with one of his most profoundly personal films, an audacious, elegiac exploration of grief, mortality, and love wrapped in the guise of a corporate-espionage thriller. Karsh (Vincent Cassel) is the enigmatic entrepreneur behind a new tech package that allows bereaved relatives to view their loved ones’ decomposing remains. When his futuristic cemetery is vandalized, he begins to suspect a conspiracy is at work, forcing him to confront the trauma of—and mystery surrounding—the death of his beloved Becca (Diane Kruger). Conceived in the wake of his own wife’s death, The Shrouds finds Cronenberg exploring heady ideas around sex, surveillance, and the ultimate body horror: the physical decay that awaits us all.

 

SPECIAL FEATURES

• Meet the Filmmakers: David Cronenberg, a Criterion Channel original interview
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Notes by critic Beatrice Loayza

 

Available October 21, 2025

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DEEP CRIMSON

1996 • 136 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • In Spanish with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

One of the peaks of subversive Mexican director Arturo Ripstein’s cinema of outsiders, this deliriously perverse portrait of obsessive love dares audiences to see the humanity in the most sordid of antiheroes. A lonely-hearts advertisement leads lusty nurse Coral (Regina Orozco) to Nicolás (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a con man with whom she forges an increasingly intense, twisted bond as they crisscross 1940s Mexico, robbing and murdering the women he seduces. Blending sweeping melodrama with macabre humor and eruptions of berserk violence, Ripstein transforms one of the most infamous true-crime stories of the twentieth century into a haunting vision of how love can give way to madness.

 

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration of the director’s cut, supervised and approved by director Arturo Ripstein, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• New interviews with Ripstein and screenwriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego
• Panel discussion from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences featuring Ripstein and Garciadiego, hosted by film scholar Cristina Venegas
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Haden Guest

Available October 28, 2025

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NIGHTMARE ALLEY

EXTENDED DIRECTOR’S CUT 2025 • 159 minutes • Black & White • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

 

THEATRICAL VERSION 2021 • 150 minutes • Color • Dolby Atmos • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

 

Noir fatalism has rarely been so alluring as in this vision of the world as a soul-sick carnival of corruption. Putting his own luxuriantly stylized spin on the classic hard-boiled novel by William Lindsay Gresham, master fabulist Guillermo del Toro conjures a sordid, seductive portrait of America on the cusp of World War II. The film follows Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a roustabout in a traveling sideshow who uses charm and deception to become a phony mentalist preying on the rich and powerful—but at what cost? Brought to life by an all-star cast that includes Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, and Rooney Mara, and nominated for four Oscars (including Best Picture), Nightmare Alley is a haunting descent into the illusory abyss of the American dream.

 

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K digital master of Nightmare Alley: Vision in Darkness and Light, a new black-and-white extended director’s cut, supervised by director Guillermo del Toro, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• 4K digital master of the theatrical version of the film, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack
• Two 4K UHD discs of the films presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the films and special features
• New audio commentary on the extended director’s cut featuring del Toro
• New documentary on the film’s performances, visual language, costume and production design, and score
• New conversation between del Toro and actor and producer Bradley Cooper
• New conversation between del Toro and co-screenwriter Kim Morgan
• Trailers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audio
• PLUS: An essay by crime-fiction and true-crime expert Sarah Weinman

 

Available October 28, 2025