20/15
acceptable might be the right word?
Chronology
Karsh, an innovative businessman and grieving widower, builds a device to connect with the dead in a shroud. Diane Kruger replaced Léa Seydoux in her role. Link to Film Junk Podcast: Episode 961: In a Violent Nature + TIFF 2024 ( 2024). Compared to the very average "Crimes of the Future" Cronenberg’s previous effort, and a return to the body horror subgenre that made him famous, "The Shrouds" is getting back to doing something… But as in that previous film, in almost every scene of "The Shrouds" you can probably think of another similar Cronenberg film that very likely did it better.
But it’s still a struggle to follow our rather lackluster protagonist through an investigation that grows tiresome by the minute
Most notably, you may be reminded of the wonderful «Crash,» which much more memorably deals with similar themes of haunting voyeurism and sexual fascination with death, physical corruption, and wounding. It’s the bane of older, seasoned filmmakers that their latest offerings are constantly compared to their earlier masterpieces, but it’s also inevitable when said filmmakers are so clearly running out of new ideas. That the story, which is much more elaborate than in «Crimes of the Future», literally goes nowhere, is not a big problem – it’s just an epiphenomenon to play with more fundamental themes. I challenge you to be genuinely interested in any of the answers surrounding the many mysteries at the heart of «The Shrouds.» Not that you should expect any answers anyway. The psyche of our main character is important, which is shown right from the opening scene (and I guess also the very last one, which made part of the packed auditorium laugh with a rather effective plot drop in the middle of nowhere).
to maintain the film
These two scenes work to convey the idea that the story is really about processing grief over the passing of a loved one, which makes sense since Cronenberg drew on his wife’s death to dream up the story. Again, though, it all feels like a late variation (if not an actual rehash) of things Cronenberg has already done and said, rather than a late-life fresh take on the same questions. What bothers me the most is that the protagonist never feels, at his psychological core, truly concerned about what is happening to him; Vincent Cassel, certainly on par with James Woods or James Spader, is pretty good as a cool, cool tech entrepreneur with a penchant for minimalism and crypto-necrophilia, but there’s just too little to convey any kind of compulsion and fascination. And what’s worse, his supposed fascination never seems real, authentic, consuming. No descent into the shadows for our hero, no path through the uncharted, rough swamps of his soul – or contemporary society.
And that is the biggest disappointment for me about «The Shrouds»
How the other pole of the director’s work, technology, is never really 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 the machine, but a real symbiosis. How our instincts and unconscious desires to re-appropriate and merge and do unspeakable things with our gadgets make us think. Nothing like that here, with an interesting premise that is never really explored.
Part of the AI
With cell phones, self-driving Teslas, and personal AI, it feels like checking uninspired boxes. assistant plot should be reworked, like so much else, although I have the idea – behind our machinery and supposedly autonomous technology is us and our unspeakable, nefarious desires. Too bad "The Shrouds" chooses to stay on the surface and not dig up the dead bodies that haunt our imaginations.