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Karsh, an innovative businessman and grieving widow, builds a device to communicate with the dead in a burial shroud. Diane Kruger replaced Léa Seydoux in the role. Referenced in the Film Junk Podcast: Episode 961: Violent in Nature + TIFF 2024 ( 2024). Compared to the very mediocre “Future Crimes,” Cronenberg’s previous efforts and his return to the body horror subgenre that made him famous, “The Shrouds” is something of a comeback… is acceptable the right word? But like that previous film, “The Shrouds” probably brings to mind another similar Cronenberg film that probably did better. Above all, you might think of the terrifying “Crash,” which explored similar themes of creepy voyeurism and sexual fascination with death, bodily corruption, and wounds in a much more memorable way. It’s the curse of older, great filmmakers to constantly compare their latest offerings to their previous masterpieces, but it’s also inevitable that said filmmakers have so obviously run out of fresh ideas. That the story, which is much more elaborate than in “Future Sins,” literally goes nowhere isn’t a major problem—it’s just a side effect that needs more play on core themes. But it’s still a struggle to follow our rather bland protagonist through an investigation that gets more boring by the minute. I challenge you to care about the answers surrounding the many mysteries at the heart of “The Shrouds.” Not that you’re expecting any answers. What matters is our protagonist’s psyche, which the opening scene makes clear (and I think the very last one, which made a portion of the packed theater laugh with a rather spectacular plot dump in the middle of nowhere). These two scenes really do convey the idea that the story is actually about grieving over the death of a loved one, which makes sense, since Cronenberg drew on the death of his wife to dream up the story. However, again, it feels like a late variation (if not an actual repetition) of everything Cronenberg has already done and said, rather than a new, late take on the same themes. What’s most disturbing is that the protagonist never feels like he’s truly troubled at his core by what’s happening to him; Vincent Cassel, who’s certainly on par with James Woods or James Spader, is good enough as the cool, cold tech entrepreneur who loves minimalism and crypto-necrophilia, but if there’s any compulsion or fascination to be expressed, it’s there. It’s simply too little to sustain the film. Worse, his supposed fascination never feels real, authentic, or consuming. There is no descent into the shadow side for our hero, no journey through the uncharted, rough swamps of his soul – or that of contemporary society. And that, to me, is what is most disappointing about “Shroud.” That the other pole of the director’s oeuvre, technology, is never really addressed. His best horror films explore the collective unconscious and how we humans relate to technology. That there is no real opposition between the organic and the machine, but an actual symbiosis. How our instincts and unconscious desires to reappropriate, merge, and do unspeakable things with our gadgets. There is none of that here, with an interesting premise that is never really explored. With cell phones, self-driving Teslas, and personal artificial intelligence, it feels like we are checking off uninspired boxes. The A.I. assistant part of the plot, like so much else, should have been fleshed out, though I get the idea – behind our machinery and supposedly autonomous technology, there are us and our unspoken, shameful desires. It’s a shame that "The Shrouds" chooses to stay on the surface instead of digging up the corpses that haunt our imaginations.
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