David Cronenberg’s chief cinematic obsession has long been the human body and all the painful, pleasurable, and generally fucked up things that people do with their corporeal forms. But in every case—from the 1970 Crimes of the Future to the 2022 Crimes of the Future (which was not a remake of the 1970 film), the beings at the center of his work deal with unusual growths, wild physical transformations, or the hunger to be penetrated in any number of ways.
With his latest film The Shrouds, the 82-year-old Canadian filmmaker homes in on the reality that these bodies of ours will one day rot away or be reduced to ashes. It’s an unsettling truth that's easy to stuff aside, even as we watch a loved one lowered into the earth.
The Shrouds' central character Karsh (Vincent Cassel) chooses to face this fate head on. After his beloved wife passes, he develops a high-tech cerecloth to wrap her corpse in that allows him to watch every step of her decay. The grieving billionaire is not alone in this bizarre postmortem voyeurism; he operates a series of cemeteries where other mourners can check in on their loved one’s decomposition via a smartphone app and a screen on the headstone.
As ever, Cronenberg presents all of this as beautifully as possible. Prototypes of the shrouds look like sexy wraiths, hanging on the walls of a restaurant built next to the cemetery where Karsh’s wife is buried. And the lines of tall markers for each gravesite look like a gorgeous, brutalist cityscape. It’s only when the director wraps a dramatic story arc around this rough skeleton of a concept that The Shrouds gets grubby.
Beginning with a group of possibly-Icelandic eco-activists upending several tombstones at Katch’s Toronto cemetery, including that of his wife, the story spins in a half-dozen dizzying directions. Katch’s sister-in-law (Diane Kruger) and her ex-husband (a dithering, miscast Guy Pearce) figure prominently, as does a potentially dangerous AI avatar called Hunny (voiced by Kruger). There’s also the young wife of a dying billionaire negotiating the opening of a new cemetery in Budapest, and the former lover turned palliative care doctor of Katch’s wife—who may (or may not) be wrapped up in the whole mess.
What makes the shower of ideas splattering the screen slightly easier to swallow is the knowledge that Cronenberg initially conceived The Shrouds as a TV series for Netflix. When the streaming service passed on it, he apparently built this film by fusing the scripts for that show’s first two episodes. With a larger canvas, stretched over 10 hours, there’s every chance Cronenberg could have explored this dark and profound territory in more depth. But with only two skittish hours at his disposal, the director barely cracks the topsoil.
The Shrouds opens in limited release at Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st; Regal Fox Tower, 846 SW Park; Cinemark Century Eastport Plaza, 4040 SE 82nd on Fri April 25
