‘The Shrouds’ Review — David Cronenberg’s Latest Techno Body Horror Delivers With Bone Cracking Effect
David Cronenberg once said, “Everybody’s a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We’re all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.”
RELATED: ‘Bring Her Back’ Review — Spellbinding Horror That Consumes Its Audience
In an age where people focus more on our individual differences, it’s easy to forget the things we have in common. We all seek shelter, comfort, sustenance, happiness, safety, and anything else to delay our inevitable demise, and that last one is the undisputed commonality we all share. The fate of mankind is that we’re doomed to die. Regardless of a person’s race, gender, political allegiances, or social status, everybody has a date with death at some point in their lives. It is the climax that’s foretold the very second we open our eyes for the first time at birth.
This leads to another common human trait, and that’s the inability to let go. It could be an ex-lover, an ex-friend, old habits, comfort zones that no longer work, the McRib sandwich going out of season, or our own lives coming to an end. But none of them hit as hard as trying to get over the death of a loved one. It doesn’t matter if their exits are sudden or if they’ve had years to prepare for it; this does little to alleviate the pain felt by those close to them, and the yearning to hear their absent voice one last time.
RELATED: ‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’ Review – Death Runs In The Family, And So Do Average Sequels
The Shrouds is the newest film by legendary director David Cronenberg (The Brood, Scanners, The Fly, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, Spider), and it is definitely his most personal. The 82-year-old filmmaker’s follow-up to the bizarre 2022 Sci-Fi dystopian drama, Crimes of the Future, shows how he’s processed great loss after his wife, Carolyn Zeifman, passed away from cancer in 2017 at age 66. The grief is palpable as one watches the film, and it causes to viewer to reflect on the attachments in their own lives, but that was his intention.
Karsh Relikh (Vincent Cassel) is a wealthy technocrat, cemetery owner, and the inventor of GraveTech: A device that allows people to view their dearly departed by interacting with a cutting-edge burial shroud that’s covering them. The shroud produces a 3D image of their rotting remains and displays it across a screen on the front of their tombstone. Why someone would want this is anybody’s guess, but it’s obvious why Karsh felt the need to build it. His wife, Becca (Diane Kruger), had died from a bone-degenerative form of cancer four years prior. A hideous, prolonged ordeal that had Becca coming home from the doctor’s office at night with a fresh amputation on her diminishing body. Something which still haunts Karsh, and rightfully so.
Helping Karsh get through this is Becca’s identical twin sister, Terry (also Kruger), and then there’s her schizophrenic ex-husband, Maury (an excellent performance by Guy Pierce). Maury is the one who coded Karsh’s GraveTech, and he even created an AI assistant for Karsh named Hunny who sounds (and acts) just like his dead wife, and that’s because Kruger provides the voice, but it’s still not as creepy as where that eventually goes. Let’s just say that Maury is off his meds again!
One night, a bunch of vandals knock over several tombstones in the cemetery (including Becca’s), encrypting the Shroud network, and leaving the bodies unviewable. This leads Karsh down a strange rabbit hole of conspiracies, infidelities, international espionage, betrayal, and the sound of someone’s hip breaking, which can never be unheard. While viewing screenshots of Becca’s body, Karsh notices protrusions on her bones that look anything but biological, and this unspoiled plot point is where the movie becomes body horror.
This is Cronenberg’s best film since Eastern Promises (2007), and he takes things to a level not seen since his underrated techno thriller, eXistenZ (1999). Regardless of the maturity on display, he has shown once again that he’s still the king of the Body Horror genre, and that his crown hasn’t moved a single solitary centimeter off his seasoned brow. It’s the work of an artist successfully processing grief, instead of wallowing in it, and creating a tragic story.
David Cronenberg has spent the last half century sewing unease in the hearts of moviegoers with cautionary tales of mankind’s destiny to merge with technology, and these same hearts now break for him with this new opus.
At the core of the film is the agonizing process of letting go, and how a lot of us struggle with it, not just over the loss of someone close, but also how we deal with our own mortality. The characters are forced to choose between holding onto a tactile past that decays before their very eyes or entering a future where names, identities, and our own bodies no longer matter. To cling to individuality (and the suffering it brings) or lose oneself in the depths of collective oblivion.
At a time when everyone desperately tries to hang onto their nostalgia, or disappear behind an online avatar, it’s impossible to ignore the feeling that Cronenberg just walked over our graves (hopefully, minus the GraveTech) with this film. The Shrouds didn’t get a lengthy theater run, nor has a date been announced for streaming it, but here’s the trailer, and “Long Live The New Flesh!”
READ NEXT: Bounding Into Halloween Night 11: ‘The Fly’ & ‘The Blob’
David Cronenberg's The Shrouds
PROS
- Great Performances
- Amazing Cinematography
- Haunting Musical Score by Howard Shore
- Dark Humor
- Graphic Violence With Restraint
- Pure Cronenberg
CONS
- Slightly Incoherent Plot
- Ambiguous Ending
- I can still hear the hip cracking
More About:Movie Reviews