The Shrouds

David Cronenberg's latest film "The Shrouds"- presented at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival-is a deeply personal meditation on grief, mortality, and the strange future of death.

Written in the years following the passing of his wife Carolyn in 2017, Cronenberg takes that emotional foundation further by casting Vincent Cassel as his clear cinematic doppelgänger, reinforcing the intimate, autobiographical nature of the film.

Marketed as a profoundly personal reckoning with grief and a descent into noir-tinged dystopia, "The Shrouds" delivers exactly that-layered with a touch of dark humor.

While it echoes themes and aesthetics from Cronenberg's past works-Spider, Videodrome, Naked Lunch, Crash-this film ultimately carves out its own space. It resists categorization, existing instead as a haunting artistic expression of Cronenberg's personal sorrow. In essence, "The Shrouds" isn't just a film; it's a cinematic eulogy, built on the decomposing bodies of its characters, confronting the raw horror of human fragility.

Rather than retelling the plot-complex and tangled as a spider's web, and easily found in trailers or synopses-I'd rather focus on the film's core themes and the impression it left on me.

At its heart, "The Shrouds" is a dystopian puzzle, obsessed with grief and the voyeuristic impulse to peer into death itself. In a world increasingly defined by surveillance and digital access, our collective morbid fascination is no longer metaphorical-it's tangible, and disturbingly real.

The titular "shroud" is a piece of funerary technology: a cloth embedded with countless tiny X-ray cameras, placed inside a coffin to allow loved ones to watch their deceased slowly decompose.

This invention stems from protagonist Karsh's (Cassel) desperate longing to lie beside his wife Bekka (Diane Kruger) in death, and has since become the cornerstone of his high-tech mourning empire. At one point, someone draws a comparison to the Shroud of Turin; Karsh casually dismisses it as a fake. The implication is clear: this is the real thing, and it's horrifying.

There's no question that death is life's most difficult truth to face. Losing someone you love is a trauma that defies reason, and the desire to remain connected-even after death-is achingly human.

But Cronenberg explores this yearning in a deeply unsettling way, reimagining cemeteries not just as places of mourning, but as sites of strange, macabre entertainment. It's painful, haunting, and brutally honest-perhaps the clearest glimpse we've ever had into Cronenberg's own soul.

Some scenes strike with visceral metaphorical power. In fragmented flashbacks, Karsh recalls tender moments with Bekka as her illness progresses-each embrace a risk, her body growing so fragile that even affection becomes dangerous.

We often associate love with gentleness, but Cronenberg asks us to reconsider that: what if love is inherently bound to fragility and decay?

The film forces us to confront that intersection-symbolically, emotionally, and physically-drawing us into the terrifying inevitability of aging and loss. It's as though Cronenberg is transmitting from the other side of grief, from a place beyond consolation.

The film also evokes comparisons to the real-world work of Gunther von Hagens (a German anatomist who pioneered the plastination technique-a groundbreaking method for preserving biological tissue specimens), and his plastinated corpses, as well as the "peeping tom" impulses common in horror fandom-a desire to look into the afterlife, to see death. And it reminds us that this isn't just a genre quirk-it's a societal impulse.

The dystopia in "The Shrouds" isn't some distant sci-fi future-it feels chillingly close. The film touches on themes of mental illness, addiction, and destructive desire (reminiscent of earlier Cronenberg works), while also weaving in threads of advanced technology, artificial intelligence, international paranoia, and xenophobia.

Unfortunately, many of these intriguing ideas remain underdeveloped, sketched more than fully explored. At times, "The Shrouds" feels less like a cohesive narrative and more like a collection of powerful notes toward a larger, unfinished project.

One subplot-Karsh investigating an act of vandalism at his futuristic cemetery with the help of his associate Maury-feels more like a device to carry us from theme to theme rather than a driving plot.

The film also quietly raises the idea of how different cultures and religions process death-a subtle layer that, while not heavily emphasized, adds depth to the broader commentary.

As the credits rolled, I found myself asking, "What did I just watch?" But that confusion felt right.

"The Shrouds" isn't meant to offer answers. It's a cinematic expression of grief so personal it resists conventional interpretation. Each viewer will take something different from it-and that, I think, is the point.

One final thought lingered: David's daughter, Caitlin Cronenberg, made her directorial debut last year with "Humane," a film very different in tone and style, yet also centered around death.

It's hard not to wonder whether these two films, father and daughter's respective explorations of mortality, stem from the same emotional origin-the loss of a wife and mother.

If so, that shared grief has birthed two deeply resonant, if radically different, works of art. In the end, "The Shrouds" isn't trying to comfort-it's trying to haunt. And in that, it succeeds.

I am so excited that David Cronenberg put this film out and that he still has fresh ideas, which didn't seem to be the case in his last film. Crimes of the Future felt like a greatest hits compilation for the director and it was not particularly engaging. I was thrilled to be intrigued by The Shrouds from the first scene! However, the film ends up being simply one philosophical conversation between characters after another while nearly nothing happens in the plot. And while the ideas are intriguing and the characters do find some level of dimension, this film is all telling with no showing and eventually frustrates the viewer. I enjoyed the fresh ideas but struggled with the fact that this was a film, I still look forward to his next work! Cronenberg has had a marvelous career and still has us thinking.

This was a disappointing movie outing. After Crimes of the Future featured a committed exploration of a weird slice of dystopian future life, I was hoping for more of the same here. Meanwhile, what we get are several disjointed, partially explored ideas mixed together, a meandering narrative, and an unsatisfying ending. Is this a political thriller? A familial drama? A physiological body horror? And the unrealistic, spoon-fed dialogue, which unfortunately seems characteristic of Canadian cinema (I say this as a Canadian). I kept waiting to feel something, to be intrigued by some thought provoking ideas, but it never happened. If you must watch this, save your money and wait until it streams.

Compared to the very mediocre "Crimes of the Future", Cronenberg's previous effort and return to the body horror subgenre that made his fame, "The Shrouds" is a return to doing something... acceptable might be the right word? But like in that previous film, in almost every scene of "The Shrouds" you are likely to think of another similar Cronenberg movie that, very probably, did it better. You might, most notably, be reminded of the awesome "Crash", which dealt with similar themes of macabre voyeurism and sexual fascination for death, physical corruption and wounds much more memorably. It is the curse of older, accomplished filmmakers that their latest offerings are ceaselessly compared to their earlier masterpieces, but it's also inevitable when said filmmakers are so clearly out of fresh ideas.

That the story, which is far more elaborate than in "Crimes of the Future", goes literally nowhere, is no major issue - it is only an epiphenomenon to play with more fundamental themes. But it is still a slog to follow our rather bland protagonist through an investigation of sorts that becomes more tedious by the minute. I challenge you to actually care about any of the answers surrounding the many mysteries at the heart of "The Shrouds".

Not that you should expect any answers anyway. What matters is our protagonist's psyche, which is made clear by the opening scene (and I guess by the very last one, which made part of the packed auditorium laugh by its rather spectacular dropping of the story in the middle of nowhere). Those two scenes do work in conveying the idea that the story really is about processing one's grief over the passing of a loved one, which makes sense given that Cronenberg drew from the death of his wife to dream up the story. Yet, again, everything feels like a late variation (if not actual repetition) of things Cronenberg already did and said, rather than a new, late-age angle on these same issues.

What bugs me most is how the protagonist never feels like he is really troubled in his psychic core by what is happening to him; Vincent Cassel, who is certainly the equal of James Woods or James Spader, is pretty good as the cool, cold tech entrepreneur who's into minimalism and crypto necrophilia, but when it comes to expressing any kind of compulsion and fascination, there simply is too little to sustain the movie. Even worse perhaps, his supposed fascination never feels real, authentic, consuming. No descent into the shadow side for our hero, no journey through the unexplored, gross swamps of his soul - or of contemporary society's.

And that, to me, is the most disappointing about "The Shrouds". How the other pole of the director's oeuvre, technology, is never actually addressed. His best horror films explore the collective unconscious and how we human beings relate to technology. How there is no real opposition between the organic and machinic but an actual symbiosis-in-coming. How we are meant by our instincts and unconscious desires to reappropriate and merge and do unspeakable things with our gadgets. Nothing like that here, with an interesting premise that is never actually explored. Featuring mobile phones, self-driving Teslas and a personal AI just feels like checking uninspired boxes. The A. I. assistant portion of the plot should, like so much else, have been elaborated on, although I get the idea - behind our machinery and supposedly autonomous tech, there's us and and our unavowed, shameful longings. Too bad "The Shrouds" decides to stay on the surface rather than dig out the dead bodies that haunt our fantasies.

Greetings again from the darkness. Director David Cronenberg is renowned for his brand of 'body horror', although his canon has certainly not been limited to the genre. Some of his films across the past fifty years include CRIMES OF THE FUTURE (2022), COSMOPOLIS (2012), A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005), CRASH (1996), DEAD RINGERS (1988), THE FLY (1986), VIDEODROME (1983), THE DEAD ZONE (a personal favorite,1983), and SCANNERS (1981). With his latest, Cronenberg offers a taste of what he's known for, but mostly focuses on the extreme repercussions of grief.

Grief is an emotion that hits us all hard at some point. Karsh (the always great Vincent Cassel) lost his wife four years ago, and his vision since has been to create a specialized, internet-based cemetery named GraveTech where grieving folks can observe the decay of lost loved ones ... all from the convenience of their iPhone app. Cronenberg regulars should prepare themselves for a film and story that has the feel of a stage production - meaning it's the dialogue and conversation that is crucial here, more so than the visual presentation (although there are a few stellar moments in that area as well).

Diane Kruger plays two roles here. One is Karsh's deceased ex-wife Becca, who we (and Karsh) see in hallucinations or visions. Her other role is as Becca's surviving sister Terry, a dog groomer who is dealing with her own grief. Lastly, a significant role is played by Guy Pearce as Terry's ex-husband, Maury ... a frumpy, paranoid, techno geek. Maury's skills have created Hunny, an AI avatar meant to provide companionship and advice to Karsh. Oh, and Diane Kruger also voices Hunny.

The thrust of the story revolves around the fallout of the targeted vandalism of a few of the gravesites, creating suspicion as to whether it's an international conspiracy or something less provocative. Of course, this is Cronenberg, so a traditional arc is not in the cards. Instead, he provides some stunning visuals (not violence, but definitely a shocking shift from what movies traditionally show) meant to convey the drastic changes that occur with the bodies we too often take for granted, especially when cancer is involved. Politics are touched on, and it's probably the first time you've ever heard a dentist speak the line, "Grief is rotting your teeth." Eroticism and obsession are key motivators here, so if you are willing, the psychological aspects of Cronenberg's film could fill many post-viewing debates. Whether this film strikes a chord with you or not, I remain thrilled and humbled that this octogenarian continues to do things his way.

Opens in theaters on April 25, 2025.