21/22
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… acceptable might be the right word? 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. Most notably, you might recall the wonderful «Crash,» which far more memorably dealt with similar themes of haunting voyeurism and sexual fascination with death, physical corruption, and wounding. It’s anathema to older, seasoned filmmakers that their latest offerings are constantly compared to their earlier masterpieces, but it’s also inevitable when these creators are clearly out of new ideas. That the story, which is much more elaborate than in «Crimes of the Future», literally goes nowhere is not a major problem – it’s just an epiphenomenon to play with more fundamental themes. But it’s still a struggle to follow our rather lackluster protagonist through an investigation that grows tiresome by the minute. 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 evident right from the opening scene (and I guess also the very last one, which made a part of the packed auditorium laugh with a rather effective plot drop into the void. ). These two scenes work to convey the idea that the story is really about processing one’s grief over the death of a loved one, which makes sense since Cronenberg drew on the death of his wife when dreaming 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 when it comes to conveying any kind of compulsion and fascination, there’s just too little to sustain the film. And what’s worse, his supposed fascination never seems real, authentic, consuming. No descent into the shadows for our hero, no journey through the uncharted, rough swamps of his soul – or contemporary society. And that, in my opinion, is the biggest disappointment 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. With cell phones, self-driving Teslas, and personal AI, it feels like checking uninspired boxes. The A.I. assistant plot part should be reworked, like so much else, though I get the idea – behind our machinery and supposedly autonomous technology is us and our unacknowledged, nefarious desires. Too bad "The Shrouds" chooses to stay on the surface and not dig up the dead bodies that haunt our imaginations.