Karsh, an innovative businessman and grieving widower, builds a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud.

Now into his 80s, David Cronenberg certainly isn’t showing any signs of letting up, with ‘The Shrouds’ following hot on the heels of 2022’s ‘Crimes of the Future’. It will not be a surprise to learn that ‘The Shrouds’ sits in the body horror genre, with Cronenberg being open about the fact this is a personal and partly autobiographical film based on how he has coped with the grief of losing his wife a few years ago.

‘The Shrouds’ tells the story of businessman Karsh (Vincent Cassel), who has invented a new piece of technology called ‘GraveTech’, which is a modified tombstone (or shroud) that is able to broadcast a live, interactive 3D image of the decomposing corpse inside. He was inspired to develop the technology after his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) died from cancer a few years earlier, and the movie follows Karsh as he attempts to expand his business, deal with hackers within the network, all while clearly still struggling to deal with Becca’s loss. The one thing you can certainly say about the film is it is a very Cronenbergian take on death and the grieving process, and you couldn’t see anyone else making this film.

As much as the premise is intriguing, I wasn’t totally sold on the rest of the film. A lot of the subplots that develop are superfluous and feel half developed, and there’s a sense that Cronenberg is trying to tie too many threads together without success. It’s certainly an ambitious approach to attempt to blend together corporate conspiracies, erotica and grief into one film, but by spreading its focus so wide, it never comes together into a cohesive whole. It’s also not helped by some stilted dialogue, sex scenes that are more cheesy than sexy, and performances that I didn’t really connect with – Cassel in particular is not at his best here.

‘The Shrouds’ is a strange meditation on grief and loss, as you would expect from David Cronenberg, but it remains a series of interesting ideas and the film is ultimately quite disappointing as a result.

Rating: 2/5

Directed By: David Cronenberg

Starring: Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce and Sandrine Holt

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt20212786/