The Shrouds

The Shrouds will make you reevaluate all the bad first dates you've had. As far as terrible encounters go, it doesn't get worse than meeting a man who invites you to watch a livestream of his wife's corpse right after dessert. This is how David Cronenberg's latest introduces protagonist Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a tech entrepreneur whose grief over the death of Becca (Diane Kruger) finds a compassionate, if a tad creepy, outlet. 

Karsh is the head of GraveTech, a high-tech burial site that allows you to keep track of your loved ones' decomposing bodies. The deceased is wrapped in a state-of-the-art shroud, sending signals to a tombstone screen which broadcasts a 3D, live image of the remains. It's the ultimate romantic gesture that cheats the 'till death do us part' formula, but its voyeuristic pleasure risks keeping one's pain too close for comfort.

When Karsh's controversial graveyard is mysteriously vandalised and its network hacked, he seeks the help of Maury (Guy Pearce), who coded the project and was married to Becca's identical twin, Terry. Karsh maintains a friendship with Terry, a pet groomer with an eye for conspiracy theories, though their relationship is complicated by his recurring horny dreams of Becca's body mutilated by cancer.

Following up on 2022's Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg furthers his exploration of decaying flesh and desire. With The Shrouds, he crafts a paranoid, eroticised nightmare about the ethical and environmental implications of technology in both life and death. Originally pitched as an ambitious international series for Netflix, The Shrouds is a morbid, pulsating testament to Cronenberg's vision. The streamer pulled out after financing the writing of the first two episodes, but their squeamishness has resulted in them missing out on a profoundly personal work.

Cronenberg came up with the central concept shortly after his wife and longtime collaborator, cinematographer and producer Carolyn Zeifman, passed away in 2017. Karsh is clearly an extension of the filmmaker, with Cassel disappearing brilliantly in a grey-haired, angular Cronenberg likeness. Like his protagonist, the auteur has talked in interviews about an impulse to join his wife in her coffin as it was lowered six feet under, and had to find a way around that urge. 

The 82-year-old body horror maestro hasn't lost an ounce of his singular, skin-crawling genius, turning every frame into a gift we ought to cherish. But a flawless movie, The Shrouds is not. Occasionally stuffed with ideas that would've had more room to breathe in an eight-episode arc, it doesn't care too much about tying up its loose ends. Mirroring the protagonist's wave of grief, The Shrouds ebbs and flows – but when it does flow, it devastates.

The movie also features Kruger's finest performance(s) to date. The German actor takes on a trio of roles: as Becca, Terry and Karsh's AI assistant Hunny, modelled after his late wife. Cassel's Karsh may be the brain, but Kruger is the body, hardware and software, and that tangible cocoon of flesh and bone is what holds together this Cronenberg classic of the future.