The Shrouds – first-look review

It’s become a cliché to say that David Cronenberg’s The Fly remains one of the most heart­break­ing films of the 1980s, a film which cul­mi­nates in an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist hav­ing to put down her sci­en­tist boyfriend for being too overzeal­ous with his toys. With his rumi­na­tive lat­est, The Shrouds, Cro­nen­berg once more makes a play for the heart­strings in what must be one of the most naked­ly mov­ing and rev­e­la­to­ry films with­in his canon.

There is, of course, a lot of iron­ic lev­i­ty too, as seen in an open­ing sequence where melan­choly wid­owed tech mag­nate, Karsh (Vin­cent Cas­sell, made up to look exact­ly like the film­mak­er), decides to dive into the dat­ing scene once more, organ­is­ing a lunch with a match for­mu­lat­ed by his den­tist in a restau­rant that’s adja­cent to a grave­yard. The joke is, it’s his restau­rant. And his grave­yard. And what’s more, his late wife, Bec­ci, is buried there – would you like to come and see her decay­ing corpse in 8K res­o­lu­tion via live-relay videofeed?

Karsh, it tran­spires, is the founder of GraveTech, a com­pa­ny who have, in tan­dem with a Chi­nese Firm named Shin­ing Cloth, devel­oped a new type of bur­ial shroud which allows for the bereaved to be in con­stant con­tact with the recent­ly depart­ed. Ever the roman­tic, Karsh is just itch­ing to dive into his plot next to Bec­ci so they may enter the eter­nal rest togeth­er, but in the mean­time, he’s able to wile away the hours zoom­ing in on her des­ic­cat­ing skull and won­der­ing what those lit­tle nod­ules grow­ing on her bones might be.

Explo­rations of grief on film are ten a pen­ny and so often lean on maudlin sen­ti­ment to achieve their intend­ed goal. The Shrouds offers some­thing that’s at once more nuanced, more com­plex and more rad­i­cal, as Karsh finds him­self hav­ing to deal with the fact that some­one may be sab­o­tag­ing his sys­tem to use it as a sur­veil­lance tool, some­thing one of his oper­a­tives and ex-broth­er-in-law Mau­ry (Guy Pearce) may have a hand in. This cen­tral con­ceit of man attempt­ing to dis­cov­er the prove­nance of strange broad­cast images and being swept into a world of polit­i­cal intrigue is a ful­some call-back to 1983’s Video­drome, and as a film about a husband’s con­spir­a­to­r­i­al obses­sions with his dead wife, there’s quite a bit of 1991’s Naked Lunch too.

The­o­ries behind to what is exact­ly hap­pen­ing to Karsh’s oper­a­tion come thick and fast, yet his con­stant attempts to process his grief pull him away from full engage­ment, pre­vent­ing this from becom­ing just anoth­er glossy tech­no-thriller about find­ing and pun­ish­ing a cul­prit. Ideas about the co-opt­ing and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of the human body expand on evo­lu­tion­ary themes explored in 2022’s Crimes of the Future, while our fix­a­tion on play­ing the game of con­spir­a­cy has reached the point of erot­ic kink, result­ing in one of the film’s best lines, intoned by Becci’s para­noiac dog-groom­ing sis­ter, Ter­ry (Diane Kruger), in a way that gives Nicole Kidman’s Eyes Wide Shut kiss-off a run for its money.

On a pro­duc­tion lev­el, this is just pre­ci­sion film­mak­ing on the high­est stripe, and there’s a heart­beat-like rhythm to both the syn­tax and syn­co­pa­tions of the dia­logue, and the beau­ti­ful­ly-judged shot/​reverse shot edits. Howard Shore deliv­ers anoth­er one of his gor­geous synth scores, this one with an apt­ly fune­re­al vibe, and long-time pro­duc­tion design­er Car­ol Spi­er threads the nee­dle between a world of pris­tine mod­ern inno­va­tion, and Japan­ese min­i­mal­ism (rep­re­sent­ed via Karsh’s man­cave, replete with tata­mi mats and indoor Koi pond). 

In essay­ing Karsh, who spends much of the film cruis­ing around in his autopi­lot­ed Tes­la, Cas­sel avoids the clichés of the pea­cock­ing, deity-like mod­ern tech-bro and instead brings to life a hunched, emo­tion­al­ly-cal­cu­lat­ed thinker who is much more rigid about find­ing equi­lib­ri­um in the work/​life bal­ance. The Shrouds is in many ways con­cerned with a very pri­mal and Cro­nen­ber­gian con­cept of tech­nol­o­gy that, like liv­ing beings, has its own evo­lu­tion­ary poten­tial, and its func­tion is often only deter­mined by the moti­va­tions of the per­son using it. 

81 years young at the time of the film’s pre­mière, Cro­nen­berg shows no sign of los­ing his unique touch, so it may feel hasty to describe this as a final tes­ta­ment. Yet what The Shrouds does offer is a new type of cin­e­mat­ic love sto­ry, one that deals with our abid­ing con­nec­tion with the dead through dreams and real­is­tic inno­va­tion rather than hav­ing to lean on such time­worn crutch­es as ghosts and high fan­ta­sy. Like much of his late work, there are a cer­tain set of demands placed on the view­er, but if you’re will­ing to take what Cro­nen­berg is giv­ing you here and tap into the film’s rich emo­tion­al main­frame, then the gifts (and heart­break) will be plentiful.