GriefTech: Death and Technology in The Shrouds,… | Little White Lies

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GriefTech: Death and Tech­nol­o­gy in The Shrouds, Inven­tion, and Severance

03 Jul 2025

Words by Jadie Stillwell

Monochrome image with bright pink and blue figure standing amongst grey concrete blocks and scattered debris on rough ground.
Monochrome image with bright pink and blue figure standing amongst grey concrete blocks and scattered debris on rough ground.

Recent sci-fi works in film and tele­vi­sion alike are artic­u­lat­ing new rela­tion­ships between con­tem­po­rary tech­nolo­gies and grief.

Like an inverse The Big Swal­low (1901), David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds (2025) begins – where else? – inside the body. A grave-cum-mor­tu­ary from which Karsh (Vin­cent Kas­sel) watch­es his wife’s (Diane Kruger) decay, becomes, in a snaky track­ing shot, the back of his throat, then the maw of his mouth, before spit­ting us out some­where just behind his teeth. Karsh is in his dentist’s office, where he’s informed that his grief over his deceased wife is neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing his oral hygiene. What’s the treat­ment for grief,” he won­ders, den­tal­ly?” 

Karsh, we soon learn, has been hard at work on a treat­ment of his own. A tech entre­pre­neur by trade, he’s invent­ed an appa­ra­tus called GraveTech,” which func­tions as a sort of stream­ing ser­vice for the recent­ly bereaved. By implant­i­ng micro­scop­ic cam­eras in a drap­ing mate­r­i­al – the tit­u­lar shrouds – Karsh offers mourn­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to observe their loved ones’ bod­ies in death. Spe­cial­ized ceme­ter­ies are out­fit­ted with head­stones that dou­ble as screens into what’s hap­pen­ing below ground; they are oper­at­ed – as Karsh proud­ly dis­plays to an intrigued though unset­tled blind date – by a mobile app tie-in that also makes it pos­si­ble to view the deceased’s body from one’s smartphone. 

In a moment where tech­no­log­i­cal advance seems so often defined by the urge to resist – or even defy – death, Cronenberg’s film taps into a dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ship between con­tem­po­rary tech and the old ter­ror of grief. While offered as a bit of unaf­fect­ed sci-fi fan­ta­sia, Karsh’s inven­tion is not a whol­ly unfa­mil­iar one. In an inter­view for Rolling Stone this April, Cro­nen­berg (who lost his wife in 2018) was non­cha­lant in response to the ques­tion of whether film still needs to be defined by the­atri­cal exhi­bi­tion and big screens. I think you can have a very cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence watch­ing things on your phone,” he explained. It’s not the same, but it’s still cin­e­ma.” So, too, per­haps, is GraveTech. The Shrouds then offers a chance to coun­te­nance death, to medi­ate grief, through a very real tech­nol­o­gy: its own. 

In that respect, it’s not alone. A slew of sci-fi works from the past cal­en­dar year have con­sid­ered how hypo­thet­i­cal tech­nolo­gies might help or harm our abil­i­ty to accept death, and thus to prop­er­ly grieve it. At the same time, these projects have seemed to offer their own tech­nolo­gies as equiv­a­lent real-world exper­i­ments, sug­gest­ing that the tech­nol­o­gy need­ed to help us face our grief may already be in exis­tence. To rephrase Karsh’s ques­tion, we might say that these works inquire into the treat­ment for grief, cinematically. 

In Court­ney Stephens and Cal­lie Hernandez’s 2024 exper­i­men­tal film Inven­tion, Her­nan­dez plays Car­rie Fer­nan­dez, a woman recent­ly rocked by the death of her father. In han­dling his estate, Fer­nan­dez finds he has left her the patent to a mys­te­ri­ous heal­ing machine,” which promis­es to cure ills of the phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al kind. Draw­ing on archival footage of Hernandez’s own father, MD-turned-holis­tic heal­er John Her­nan­dez who passed away in 2021, the film not only blurs the lines between doc­u­men­tary and nar­ra­tive forms, but also begins to col­lapse the space between a fic­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy and a cin­e­mat­ic one. When the heal­ing machine is even­tu­al­ly unveiled and turned on, it pro­duces whirring sequences of sound, image, and light. Flash­es of green and neon psy­che­delia are looped over an ambi­ent sound­scape, empha­siz­ing the non-nar­ra­tive capac­i­ties of exper­i­men­tal film. The effect for audi­ences is dou­ble: the images immerse us in Callie’s point of view while also under­scor­ing that the machine itself is not only draw­ing from the tech­niques of, but in fact pro­duc­ing exper­i­men­tal cin­e­ma. The fic­tion­al heal­ing machine is no longer just a tech­nol­o­gy on the screen; it is the tech­nol­o­gy of the screen.

Two people seated at a wooden conference table, one man and one woman, in a room with green panelled walls.
Mark S and Helly R in Severance

This trend can also be traced in recent tele­vi­sion series. In Apple TV+’s Sev­er­ance, bio­corp giant Lumon man­u­fac­tures brain chips that allow users to sev­er,” or switch on and off between, their work and per­son­al lives. Griev­ing wid­ow­er Mark Scout (Adam Scott) is com­pelled by the sci­ence as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to for­get his wife’s pass­ing for eight hours a day, ren­der­ing a ver­sion of him­self that is not only a pro­duc­tive work­er, but also lives rel­a­tive­ly pain-free. The pro­ce­dure is not with­out its down sides. The sev­er­ance chip, acti­vat­ed by a spa­tial bound­ary, ulti­mate­ly affects a tem­po­ral dis­so­nance: office-bound innies’ expe­ri­ence life as a con­tin­u­ous work­day – A week­end just hap­pened? I don’t even feel like I left,” notes Britt Lower’s Helly R – while their out­ies’ miss whole chunks of time. The show real­izes this dis­crep­an­cy in episodes that take place in real time,” like in the first season’s whirl­wind finale, or entire­ly with­in the warped lin­ear­i­ty of the sev­ered floor, as in the sec­ond season’s pre­mière, in which the time elapsed since the events of the first sea­son is delib­er­ate­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed to audi­ences and innies alike. 

As with Inven­tion and The Shrouds, the func­tion­al­i­ty of the tech at the root of Sev­er­ances sci-fi con­ceit is echoed by the tele­vi­su­al tech­nol­o­gy that pro­duces the show. His­tor­i­cal­ly bro­ken up by ads, episodes, and sea­sons, tele­vi­sion – per­haps even more so than cin­e­ma – relies on time as its orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple and pri­ma­ry medi­um. The major cat­e­go­ry of tele­vi­sion” wrote the­o­rist Mary Ann Doane in 1988, is time.” The lit­er­al­ly mind-bend­ing tech­nol­o­gy of Sev­er­ance, employed in the case of its pro­tag­o­nist to mit­i­gate grief, splices time in the same mode as, well, a TV show. 

In some ways, this reflex­ive pat­tern harkens back to the ear­li­est days of mov­ing image cul­ture, when the technology’s new­ness often saw it put in con­ver­sa­tion with mod­ern anx­i­eties over acci­dent, dis­as­ter, or death. Ear­ly films like, for instance, the afore­men­tioned com­ic trick film, The Big Swal­low – in which a man approach­es a cam­era pho­tograph­ing him and, in an act of irri­ta­tion or amuse­ment, eats it whole – played on the film appa­ra­tus’ abil­i­ty to cap­ture or depict nonex­is­tence. Where the film might be assumed to end with a black screen, as the cam­era itself is swal­lowed, we’re instead shown the tri­pod and pho­tog­ra­ph­er dis­ap­pear­ing into dark­ness, sug­gest­ing that film has some­how been able to cap­ture an after­life, even after its own demise. 

The effect of film’s abil­i­ty to rep­re­sent death has been the sub­ject of much crit­i­cism and foun­da­tion­al the­o­ry. In 1951, French crit­ic André Bazin sug­gest­ed that film’s abil­i­ty to cap­ture and then repeat the unre­peat­able moment of death – as in the doc­u­men­tary he was review­ing, Myr­i­am Bor­sout­sky and Pierre Braunberger’s Bull­fight – might both des­e­crate” the final­i­ty of loss, while also ren­der­ing it even more mov­ing.” That ambiva­lence is then affirmed in these recent works where the sci-fi tech­nol­o­gy mar­shalled to coun­ter­act their char­ac­ters’ grief does lit­tle more than com­pli­cate it. Mark Scout’s inabil­i­ty to recall the loss of his wife leads him to turn his back on her by the end of the sec­ond sea­son. Inven­tions Cal­lie, after oper­at­ing the heal­ing machine, is moved to help­less tears rather than some deep­er sense of peace or com­pre­hen­sion. The Shrouds ends ambigu­ous­ly, with Karsh seem­ing to move on from his wife while, of course, con­tin­u­ing to see her everywhere. 

But the lack of res­o­lu­tion is what makes these recent works such effec­tive med­i­ta­tions on what mov­ing image tech­nol­o­gy knows of – or owes to – death. Over the past few years, images of dev­as­ta­tion have pro­lif­er­at­ed across mobile plat­forms, stream­ers, and big screens alike. Fears that such images might ren­der view­ers desen­si­tized to grief or vio­lence are coun­ter­act­ed by projects that explore visu­al medi­ums as tools for fac­ing the fall­out of death head on. If there is no treat­ment for grief, cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly, it’s per­haps only because such treat­ment is nec­es­sar­i­ly ongo­ing, always unre­solved. As tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ues to advance into realms some might call post-human, these recent works affirm that it can still remain a tool for explor­ing the most human thing: life and our respons­es to its end­ing. By invit­ing view­ers to see film and tele­vi­sion as a kind of GriefTech,” these works under­score the blind­ing inevitabil­i­ty of loss with­out turn­ing from it. That is: we only tru­ly lose if we refuse to keep looking. 

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