In movies like Pet Sematary or even Adam Wingard’s Blair Witch, the monster is grief. It’s the (rather human) unwillingness to move on and let go that results in a rapid, downward spiral that inadvertently gets everyone killed in the process. In David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, however, grief isn’t so much a monster as it is a sickness you can’t defeat. It doesn’t matter what tools, physical or emotional, you come equipped with: dead is dead. And as bleak as that sounds, the two-hour horror-drama is more of a beautiful reality check – and a reminder that we’ll be okay, as long as we don’t fight it.
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The Shrouds marks Cronenberg’s 23rd feature-length film over a long and prolific career that spans over 50 years, and is without a doubt his most personal. Vincent Cassel stars as Karsh, a businessman and tech genius who, after his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) passes away from cancer, develops a high-tech burial shroud that acts as an underground live broadcast feed that allows grieving individuals to watch their loved ones decompose in real time. This, he explains, was born out of the desire to get into the coffin with his wife as they were lowering her into the ground. And if this isn’t enough, Karsh also has an animated AI avatar named Hunny (also Kruger) modeled after his wife that talks to him throughout the day, scheduling his meetings and going through his to-do list. This all seems helpful to some extent, but it doesn’t stop him from having vivid nightmares where Becca visits him in her autopsied form.
"I felt that Karsh would feel that it was too painful to be really communicating with an avatar that was so lifelike, like his dead wife. It would cause some pain," Cronenberg tells GamesRadar+ while discussing the film. "So he wanted it to be a kind of cartoony, emoji version of his wife so that he would have some distance from it. And the question is: will that be cathartic? Will it be therapeutic? Or will it just be endlessly painful because you will not be letting go of that person? And of course, the impulse is to not let go."
Technology is something that the filmmaker has visited time and time again, as this imperfect thing that we as humans reach for in order to satisfy our primal needs for connection. In Videodrome, sadism and overstimulation reign over the lives of Max Renn (James Woods) and his masochistic lover Nicki (Debbie Harry). In eXistenZ, video games are played via fleshy pods that extend from our spinal cords. Even in 2022’s Crimes of the Future, surgery becomes a voyeuristic trend that packs hundreds of people into one room. In The Shrouds, technology is used in order to try and cure an incurable ache, and proves once again to be something utterly flawed.
"It was always evident that technology is us. It's absolutely an extension of our bodies and our minds," Cronenberg explains. "And so, as we are imperfect, our technology is imperfect. And as we create beautiful things and also create incredibly destructive things, so our technology does that as well, because it is us. You’re never gonna get perfect technology, just as you will never get a perfect human being. That doesn't mean one should not explore what our technology gives us."
As we move through the film, things only seem to get worse for Karsh. Someone hacks the GraveTech technology and makes it impossible for him to see Becca’s body. Hunny begins to emulate the autopsied, amputated form of Becca that visits him in his dreams at night. It’s as if the technology he built to ease his pain has suddenly turned against him. Slowly, but surely, he starts to come to terms with the fact that she’s gone forever. This cuts especially deep for the viewer with the knowledge that the inspiration for the film came directly from the death of Cronenberg’s wife, Carolyn, in 2017.
"A lot of people say to me, you know, 'So has making this film been cathartic and helped you with your grief?’ And the answer is 'No,'" he says. "It doesn't help at all. It's not cathartic. I don't think of art as therapy. It's not therapy. It's a different thing." He goes on to tell me that he’s an atheist, an existentialist, and that body is reality: "To me, there is no afterlife."
This is evident in The Shrouds, as a movie so concerned with death somehow manages to make zero mention of what happens to the soul after. For Karsh, there is no after. And though Cronenberg is one of the most influential directors in the horror genre, there are no spooky or supernatural elements in his films. In his filmography, there is mutated flesh, exploding heads, giant talking beetles, and psychic premonitions – but there are no ghosts. Each film, no matter how delightfully absurd or visually disturbing, is grounded in reality, in a nearby plane of existence. The Shrouds paints a rather grim picture of the not-so-distant future: we can already use AI to turn old photographs into videos… why not use it to bring our loved ones back from the dead?
The Shrouds isn’t so much a meditation on grief as it is a reality check: it doesn’t matter what you do after someone dies. Death doesn’t care how you cope. Karsh puts himself as close as he possibly can be to his deceased wife, to the point where he can literally watch her body decompose in real time, and it doesn’t help him move on. It doesn’t make him any less obsessed. Though there are some comedic elements sprinkled throughout the film (with laugh-out-loud absurdity delivered by a frantic Guy Pearce), you might leave the theater contemplating your entire life and the ways in which you cope with devastation. You also might disable Siri on your phone, and shove the whole damn thing in a drawer for a while.
The Shrouds is set to hit UK theaters on July 4. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.
