David Cronenberg Crafts A Blistering Thriller About Sex, Death, And Grief [NYFF]

Is a David Cronenberg movie even a David Cronenberg movie if it isn’t dealing with the intersection between technology, existentialism, and sex? Set in the near future of a deceptively dystopian world, “The Shrouds” is a bleak and thought-provoking experience right from its opening frame: a closeup of a woman’s naked corpse in ghostly suspended animation, followed by open-mouthed howls of pain and grief from her onlooking widower. The director’s pitch-black sense of humor creeps in almost immediately, however, with a jarring transition to a dentist visit years later and the practitioner’s blunt, deliciously deadpan proclamation that, “Grief is rotting your teeth.” Subtext? Who needs it! The brazen unsubtlety of these opening moments, to put it mildly, is a perfect summation of everything that’s to come in the following 119 minutes.

“The Shrouds” is a testament to the idea that, at this point, Cronenberg’s personal life can’t help but bleed onto the page. The 81-year-old filmmaker has made an unparalleled career out of how he approaches body horror and cerebral (some might even say cold and emotionally distant) storytelling, and those aspects are certainly present in abundance throughout his latest, too. But in this case, he’s personally experienced the tragedy at the forefront of this story. His wife of almost 40 years, film editor Carolyn Zeifman, passed away of cancer in 2017 and was clearly the impetus and inspiration behind this script. And in a fitting bow for a narrative all about the ways that life can’t be neatly compartmentalized, Cronenberg’s own secular Jewish upbringing and his staunch atheism bleed right into the journey of his main character Karsh … and what a harrowing journey it is.

Let’s put it this way: thank the film gods that the initial plan to make this a Netflix series fell through. Not only is this guaranteed to be one of the more memorable theater experiences, but “The Shrouds” is a lean, mean, and diabolically unnerving machine — one that easily ranks as the most personal of Cronenberg’s movies.

Maybe the living were never meant to think this much about death. Cronenberg characters have always erred on the side of obsessive, and few in his oeuvre can match the level of single-minded fervor consuming Karsh from the inside out. The filmmaker’s muse this time around is Vincent Cassel (now a three-time collaborator with Cronenberg, following “Eastern Promises” and “A Dangerous Method”), who plays a mourning entrepreneur barely holding it all together as he wrestles with the inevitability of decay. Reeling from the profound loss of his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) to cancer, we’re told he’s channeled his unsettled emotions into a new invention that all but revolutionizes the way we perceive death. True to its name, the Shroud is a full-body wrapping that encases the recently deceased in a high-tech burial shroud and allows those left behind to view their dearly departed loved ones from within their casket … provided you pay the exorbitant fee to purchase this luxury, exclusively available through Karsh’s company known as GraveTech. Part arthouse exhibit (the smart screens mounted on each tombstone are kitschy at best and unsettling at worst) and part shameless business venture (there’s an app-supported component, of course), Karsh’s creepy ingenuity earns him the label of “corpse voyeur.”

If technology that incorporates a high-resolution live feed into a tomb — which also doubles as an x-ray machine, breaking down a body into microscopic detail — doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, well, that’s just part of the fun in “The Shrouds.” A longtime master of world-building verisimilitude, Cronenberg is wryly aware of the rampant fatalism on display. A disastrous blind date in the early going (set in the restaurant Karsh owns overlooking his company’s shroud-laden graveyard, natch) makes it clear that not everyone in this world is willing to look past the “mad” in Karsh’s “mad genius.” His uber-rich clientele might share his morbid curiosity and inability to let go of the dead, but the same can’t be said for his paranoid sister-in-law Terry (Becca’s identical twin, also played by Kruger), convinced that Becca was the victim of some insidious medical conspiracy, or Terry’s ex-husband Maury (Guy Pearce), a tech-savvy loner who’s all too familiar with clinging stubbornly to the past. Even Karsh’s personal AI assistant Hunny (an intentionally goofy-looking digital creation, also voiced by Kruger) can tell something’s off.

When his prized graveyard ends up viciously vandalized by an unknown party and the mystery deepens into something with potentially global implications, Karsh’s downward spiral finds the perfect outlet for his unprocessed grief and looks to pin blame on vocal GraveTech critics such as religious fanatics, ecoterrorists, and political bad actors who view this digital cemetery (and his plans to rapidly expand on an international scale) as either an affront to God and nature … or a digital surveillance network just begging to be exploited. Before you know it, Cronenberg’s visionary hand at the wheel makes it easy to buy into this outlandish premise and plunge headlong into the abyss right alongside our deeply disturbed protagonist, who’s all too happy to quite literally surround himself in death.

The meatiest portions of “The Shrouds” that demand discussion and analysis are best left unspoiled, particularly in a high-wire final act that closes on the bleakest and most sarcastic of punchlines. But viewers would be well advised to adjust their expectations going in. Although not even remotely as gory or violent as Cronenberg has been in the past (“How dark are you willing to go?”, Karsh asks someone early on — a daring, implicit promise that hardcore horror heads will find largely goes unfulfilled), this in many ways might just be one of his most inaccessible works yet. That becomes readily apparent as the movie refuses to pick a genre lane and instead dabbles in multiple at the same time. It’s partly a techno thriller about the unintended consequences of technology run amok, partly an erotic drama exploring Karsh’s virility in the midst of his grief (the way women constantly throw themselves at him is hardly a leap — this is a character portrayed by the ever-grizzled Cassel, after all — but Cronenberg soon turns this into a running gag), and even an engaging mystery of sorts that Karsh calls a “classic detective’s problem” at one point. Most of all, however, it’s predominantly a cautionary tale that never forgets its (relatively) grounded sci-fi roots.

Yet the deeper the script dives into Karsh’s truly damaged psychology, the more horror-infused the proceedings become. Cinematographer Douglas Koch (who also worked on Cronenberg’s “Crimes of the Future”) relishes in playing with light and shadows, ratcheting up the tension even as he almost always keeps a steady hand on the camerawork — in direct juxtaposition to Karsh’s own loosening grip on reality. In fact, the true depths of his depression only reveal itself through a series of nightmares (memories? Fantasies?) of a nude Becca in the midst of the debilitating disease that ultimately her life. Here, Cronenberg’s blunt approach to capturing the naked human form gives way to startling bursts of body horror, as “The Shrouds” turns into a melting pot of confused emotions: lust, loss, and hypocrisy all feeding into each other.

All the while, Cassel, Pearce, Sandrine Holt in a supporting role as a prospective client of GraveTech, and especially Kruger in her multiple roles deliver fiercely committed performances that force you to keep your eyes glued to the screen … even when the intensity might have you desperate for a respite or two. Some may be tempted to refer to “The Shrouds” as Cronenberg playing in a minor key, but that does no justice whatsoever to a chilly, almost shell-shocked drama that derives so much meaning and even poignancy out of its emotional remove. Cronenberg fans, you will not want to miss this one.

/Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

“The Shrouds” will be released in theaters in the spring of 2025.