“You’ve made a career out of bodies.”
Though this line is meant for Vincent Cassel’s character, Karsh, it could just as easily apply to the man who wrote it. David Cronenberg has indeed made a career out of bodies, transmogrifying many through slimy prosthetics as in “The Fly,” exploring their cavernous depths through sociological and psychosexual means as in “Eastern Promises,” often finding ways to blend the two into new, mysterious wholes as in his 2022 film, “Crimes of the Future.” In “The Shrouds,” Cronenberg has found a new, dark and perverse way to continue making his career out of bodies.
“The Shrouds” follows Karsh, a Canadian tech mogul whose newest invention, GraveTech, allows mourners to peer into their loved ones’ graves to watch their bodies decompose. Karsh is obsessed with tracking the decay of his late wife, Rebecca (Diane Kruger), and consults her twin sister, Terry (also Kruger), after finding a lump on one of her bones. Soon after, Karsh’s cemetery, where GraveTech has been implemented through his “shroud” technology, is vandalized, which leads Karsh down an endless web of conspiracies.
Cronenberg has never been one to shy away from the macabre or the lurid, but he is more emotionally provocative here than usual. “The Shrouds” comes in the wake of the death of Carolyn Ziefman, Cronenberg’s wife and longtime creative partner. Her death in 2017 casts a long shadow over the movie as Cronenberg explores grief in all its forms, known and unknown. His films are always reflections of some part of himself, but the pervading sadness and humor he mines from personal tragedy make this a revealing and vulnerable work.
In an era where many of our most renowned auteurs are making somewhat autobiographical movies as period pieces like Steven Spielberg with “The Fabelmans” or Paul Thomas Anderson with “Licorice Pizza,” it’s captivating to see Cronenberg transpose his personal life to the screen in a more outre and contemporary fashion. He’s even made Cassel up to resemble him, replete with that iconic silver mane of his. That Cronenberg approaches loss and mourning with a sense of humor is unsurprising, but the straightforward wryness of the comedy is. The tonality of the script, abrasively dark and riotously funny at once, could rub an unfamiliar audience the wrong way, but I’m sure he would love that all the same.
Despite revolving around a futuristic-sounding technology that allows people to view their loved ones’ corpses in decay, the film is aggressively positioned in the world of today. Karsh drives a Tesla, Terry drives a Subaru. Smartphones are the delivery system through which people can access the 24/7 livestreams of their beloveds’ progressive rot. Karsh is kept sane, or unsane depending upon who you ask, by an AI avatar named Hunny (also, also Kruger), created by Terry’s pathetically paranoid ex, Maury (Guy Pearce). The ails of modern living are perpetuated by the very cycles of technology that Karsh is complicit in, all while trying to escape them.
Cronenberg is one of our finest observers of the human condition, often pushing the body to physical extremes in order to break down its place in the society it inhabits. Though “The Shrouds” is less obsessed with body horror on its surface, its layers slowly peel back and reveal a greater obsession with the body than in his classics regarding “the new flesh.”
These age-old fascinations are made manifest in flashbacks to Rebecca’s treatments for her illness and interactions with Karsh, all of which take place in a dreamlike black box-esque bedroom. In this space, reality feels grounded in an otherwise entirely technologically-minded world. The past gains a dimension of clarity, and these scenes are where it feels like Cronenberg is truly baring all, down to the duo’s nudity. As Rebecca undergoes more severe operations, losing an arm and a breast in the process, Karsh only loves her more, wishing that he could keep her here forever. In a way, he does, but at what cost?
Outside of these tragically lovely flashbacks, the film operates at a consistently caustic register. In his obsession over the vandalization of his GraveTech site and Rebecca’s grave by proxy, Karsh sinks himself deeper into various webs of conspiracy, some involving Russian hackers, others involving Chinese technocrats. Or is it the other way around? Karsh and his traveling troupe can’t keep it straight by a point, and neither can we. How are we meant to? Operating in this age of non-stop digital noise and fury, Cronenberg elucidates nothing, opting instead to center his audience within grief’s slow tumble into madness.
By the end of “The Shrouds,” little is answered, even less is satisfactory. But that’s OK. In 2025, technologically provoked uncertainty is one of the only certainties we have anymore. Cronenberg’s two-hour exploration of what it means to live and to die, in the age of AI and digital deceit, is well worth the time, though that may depend on your answer to a question posed early on in the film: “How dark are you willing to go?”
“The Shrouds” opens in wide release on April 25.
