Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!
David Cronenberg makes movies that are upsetting. He took a break from overt horror movies for a bit, but the movies he made were still upsetting in real ways (and I remain convinced that Eastern Promises is the most depressing movie with a happy ending I have ever seen). Lately, he’s slid back into horror films. The Shrouds is a film that touches on horror, but only in the sense that there are clear body horror elements to it, which is par for the course with Cronenberg. This is much more a science fiction drama with disturbing romance elements, but since it’s Cronenberg, horror is certainly going to be an element.
The Shrouds is also a film that has a suitably bizarre premise to get things going, something that Cronenberg is no stranger to. That’s not a necessity for Cronenberg, but it is pretty common. The central premise of The Shrouds is that there are people who, so distraught in grief by the loss of a loved one that they would want to be able to see the body of the body of that loved one decaying in the grave.
Yes, that’s where we are starting. Karsh (Vincent Cassel) became so distraught over the death of his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) that he designed a technology he dubbed GraveTech. GraveTech, by way of a technological shroud that the body is wrapped in, gives those who interact with the deceased’s gravestone, can get a 3D image of the decaying body of their loved one. In the years since her death, Karsh has been unable to really connect with another woman, but maintains a platonic relationship with her twin sister Terry (also played by Diane Kruger), and is reguAlarly accused of having an affair with her by Maury (Guy Pearce), her ex-husband and the man responsible for a great deal of the GraveTech technology.
Karsh is continually haunted by Becca in his dreams, often with her returning from doctor appointments with body parts missing in vain attempts to counteract the bone cancer that killed her. Several things then happen essentially at once. The first is that Karsh notices strange growths on the remains of his late wife that he believes may be related to the cancer. He also meets Soo-Min Szabo (Sandrine Holt), the blind wife of a dying man who wants to create a GraveTech cemetery in Budapest. The two being a sexual relationship while attempting to enter a professional one.
Additionally, Karsh’s main cemetery is attacked and a number of the headstones, including Becca’s are damaged. The attack appears to have come from Iceland and hints at a potentially much larger conspiracy against the graveyards he is building. To further complicate matters, it turns out that sister-in-law Terry is aroused by the idea of conspiracy, and so the relationship between Karsh and the twin sister of his dead wife becomes sexual as well. The conspiracy might go deep, but could also simply be entirely in the mind of Maury, whose schizophrenia starts to become more and more active, especially with Karsh and Terry now having sex, something he always feared.
As I said at the top, Cronenberg movies are often incredibly upsetting. The Shrouds is disturbing on several counts. The first is simply the body horror of people wanting, craving, to look at the decomposing remains of their loved ones. I can accept a lot of crazy plot ideas, but, much like Cronenberg’s Crash (based off the equally wack-a-loon book by J.G. Ballard), this is a movie about a kink that no one has.
Second, there is the continued dissolution of Becca’s body shown in Karsh’s dreams. These are done with full-frontal nudity, and every time Becca shows back up, there is less of her, and she is covered in more and larger scars. This image—missing lower left arm, partial mastectomy, hip replacement scars, and more—is eventually co-opted by Hunny (Diane Kruger once again), Karsh’s AI assistant, and in one sequence, by Soo-Min.
Finally, and in some ways the most deeply disturbing, there is the unpleasant sex, which again leads to comparison with Crash. Here, the sex isn’t physically upsetting but psychologically. While Karsh and Terry are in the throes of sex, she asks him for comparisons between her and her dead sister—like will they have the same orgasms. Again, this can’t actually be a kink that anyone has, can it?
I like David Cronenberg’s work, but there are times when he really expects his audience to take a huge leap of faith for that original premise.
The Shrouds isn’t Cronenberg’s best work, or even his best recent work. It feels very much like a movie that is about itself, because aside from the basic idea of grief, there is nothing here that feels like it relates to the real world.
Why to watch The Shrouds: It’s Cronenberg.
Why not to watch: Seriously, that premise is nonsense.
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