TIFF 2024: The Shrouds

Courtesy of TIFF

David Cronenberg’s latest film starts off with a bang — or more accurately, a scream. But that jolt of energy quickly gives way to something quieter and more contemplative. The opening vision introduces us to both Karsh (Vincent Cassel, styled to maximize a resemblance to Cronenberg himself) and the high concept that drives the story’s thematic underpinnings: GraveTech, a surveillance system that allows you to monitor your deceased loved ones’ real-time decomposition. As both developer and user of GraveTech’s proprietary shrouds, Karsh’s personal and professional interests begin to converge after an act of sabotage involving his late wife’s burial plot, pivoting his path through the stages of grief towards the center of an international conspiracy.

Clearly a piece born from personal tragedy, The Shrouds excels in its most internalized moments. Haunting, visceral sequences existing somewhere between nightmare and memory fit right in among the most vital imagery of Cronenberg’s long career, serving to deepen his decades-long preoccupations with the impermanence of the body and the persistence of the soul. Though far from the first time the director has juxtaposed sexual desire and bodily terror, there’s a sincerity and vulnerability on display — skillfully and boldly played by Cassel and Diane Kruger — that leads to some of the most heartbreaking work he’s done in this vein. Passion, guilt, arousal, revulsion: seemingly incompatible feelings intermingle and coalesce in a wrenching tapestry of loss and longing.

Taken holistically, however, The Shrouds fails to reach the heights of Cronenbergs past, in large part due to the prevalence of the aforementioned conspiracy in which Karsh finds himself embedded. Scenes of brilliance are surrounded, even subsumed, by an undercooked corporate espionage plot, resulting in long and stilted expository conversations between Cassel and Guy Pearce that strain one’s patience as the wheel-spinning nature steadily detracts from the more essential elements. Compounding the problem is a sense that the film is acting as a staging ground for a wide spectrum of big ideas (there’s a substantial subplot revolving artificial intelligence and digital assistants that serves mostly as a humorous distraction), which ultimately waters down the whole endeavor. If you can overlook these quirks, The Shrouds has plenty to offer, but the lack of focus on the most interesting and coherent themes frustratingly detracts from the potency.