Review:
"The Shrouds"
Prompted by the 2017 cancer-related death of his wife Carolyn, David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds offers an intensely personal study in grief that finds the writer-director employing body horror in the most realistic and grounded manner in his 55-year career. In this measured and earnest drama, Cronenberg’s on-screen surrogate Vincent Cassel generates as much empathy as he does misgivings as Karsh, a rich widower whose unusual grief coping mechanism affords him a unique business opportunity. Following the death of his beloved wife Becca (Diane Kruger), Karsh invents a shroud with 3D monitoring technology that allows him to “watch” Becca’s decaying corpse in her coffin. For Karsh, who remains unable to move past Becca’s death, there is something comforting about remote monitoring his wife in her various stages of decomposition. And he offers this technology to the equally wealthy families that bury their loved ones in the cemetery he part owns. However, Karsh’s plans to expand this service domestically and internationally is placed in jeopardy following the vandalization of graves at the cemetery—including the one belonging to his wife—and the hacking of the GraveTech monitoring system. Karsh employs his estranged ex-brother-in-law Maury (Guy Pearce, embracing his inner sad-sack) to investigate, and what follows is a gripping and typically Cronenberg-ian exploration of how our bodies often turn against us, the intrusion of advanced technology in our lives, and the need to replace reality with fantasy to cope with trauma. As Becca decomposes, Karsh notices nodules growing on her skeletal remains. Cronenberg floats several possible and/or misleading theories about the origin of these nodules, including tracing them back to the cancer that claimed Becca’s life. This particular aspect of The Shrouds is oddly undeveloped by Cronenberg’s standards, perhaps because even the mere suggestion of the body continuing to evolve even in death and decay is in itself quite unsettling. But it does further cement Karsh’s obsession with his late wife and creates an added layer of mystery to the conspiracy Karsh sets out to expose, if it even exists. Of more intrigue is Cronenberg returning to Dead Ringers territory with the introduction of Becca’s twin sister Terry, both played by Diane Kruger. Terry, of course, is a constant reminder of Becca for Karsh, and their close but platonic relationship naturally complicates matters throughout in The Shrouds. A subtly seductive Kruger generates much of the sexual energy in The Shrouds, with her vet turned dog groomer being aroused in a way that would amuse the symphorophiliacs of Crash. She also appears as Becca in hallucinations that offer vivid glimpses into Karsh’s state of mind and continuing efforts to come to terms with her physical transformation during her fight against cancer. This being Cronenberg, though, there are hints that Becca’s changing body is not necessarily all the result of natural causes. Even an affair with a potential client’s wife (a serene Sandrine Holt) serves as a way for Karsh to project Becca’s image onto another woman. In The Shrouds, and possibly Cronenberg’s own experience, grief is so strong and powerful that you see—or believe you can see—a lost loved one in anyone and everywhere. And Cronenberg positions the technology The Shroud as less of a means for Karsh to move past Becca’s death than to hold on too long to her memory. And, intentionally or otherwise, The Shrouds depicts Karsh’s preoccupation with Becca’s corpse as a psychological hinderance at best, voyeuristic and intrusive at worst. To grieve is to be human but not at the expense of denying the dead to rest in peace. The Shrouds finds a veteran filmmaker processing his own grief in ways many of us cannot understand or appreciate, and the result is the most human work to spring forth from Cronenberg’s enigmatic and furtive mind. Posted: April 25, 2025. Web site: https://www.janusfilms.com/films/2266 |
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