The Shrouds

It’s disappointing to see a talented filmmaker lose his way in one of his works. Unfortunately, that’s precisely the problem with the latest effort from acclaimed writer-director David Cronenberg in a film that seemingly had potential but fails to pull it together in the final product. Karsh Relikh (Vincent Cassel) is a successful Canadian businessman consumed with grief over the death of his wife, Becca (Diane Kruger), who attempts to cope with his loss by inventing a questionable and arguably macabre technology that allows survivors to peer into the graves of their departed loved ones to, for lack of a better explanation, monitor the deterioration of the deceaseds’ corpses. From this premise (and the misleading trailer), one might get the impression that this would be a story with dark, spooky, supernatural overtones. However, as it plays out, the film goes from tangent to tangent to tangent without direction or satisfactory closure, leading viewers on a wild goose chase that, in the end, feels unresolved and incomplete. This alleged horror offering (which is admittedly not particularly scary or engaging) is actually more of a mystery/psychological thriller that ends up weaving a jumbled web of story arcs involving ever-evolving incidents of international business espionage and technological intrigue, the paranoid (and head-scratchingly erotically driven) ravings of Becca’s conspiracy theory-obsessed sister, Terry (Kruger in a dual role), the love-starved pining of Terry’s unbalanced ex-husband and expert computer hacker, Maury (Guy Pearce), and Karsh’s tawdry affair with Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt), the blind wife of a dying Hungarian corporate magnate (Vieslav Krystyan) who wants to invest in the expansion Karsh’s graveyard technology venture, among other puzzling and seemingly unrelated narrative threads. Add to this the picture’s glacial pacing and a series of overlong and not especially revelatory dream sequences, and viewers are left with a genuinely bizarre offering. To its credit, the production features some inventive cinematography, a capable collection of performances, and a surprising wealth of inspired and perfectly timed comic relief (truly one of the film’s best attributes), but these assets aren’t enough to save a sinking ship that plunges deeper and deeper the longer this release goes on, all the way up to its abrupt and unfulfilling conclusion. This clearly is one of those productions that’s likely to prompt many audience members to ask, “What was the director thinking?”, a justifiable inquiry, to be sure. Cronenberg has produced a fine body of work over the course of his career, but it’s nearly impossible to fathom what he was going for here.

For all his cool detachment, methodical craftsmanship and pitch-black irony, The Shrouds finds the great David Cronenberg at his most heartfelt and, despite having publicly played down the autobiographical nature of this script, at his most personal.

Cronenberg's wife passed away in 2017 after a prolonged illness and in Vincent Cassel's Karsh we could perhaps see a Cronenberg cypher, through which the great filmmaker shares his experiences of loss, grief and sexual desire, as well as one's wrestle with impermanence and mortality.

Karsh is a businessman in the death business, haunted by his dead wife during sleep and by her twin sister (both played by the beautiful Diane Kruger) in waking life. And through the unfolding conspiracy against Karsh's burgeoning voyeuristic graveyard empire, Cronenberg is able to explore many of his long-held concerns - the intersection of tech and our bodies, the fate of human connection, the environment and, viscerally, the degradation, fetishisation, corruption and fallibility of our corporeal form.

Cronenberg, who openly admits he's more influenced by novels than films, takes a very measured, complex and literary approach to the narrative in The Shrouds, ending on an emotionally weighted final note, rather than one driven by narrative urgency or interest.

We're not afforded the answers to the conspiracy plot in a neatly wrapped package, instead we're offered the haunting realisation that our protagonist will never be unmarked by his wife's death, that every new object of desire will bear his burden and share her scars.