Vague Visages’ The Shrouds review contains minor spoilers. David Cronenberg’s 2024 movie features Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger and Guy Pearce. Check out the VV home page for more film reviews.

David Cronenberg’s fascination with skin and organs obviously makes his films visually shocking, but in many of his greatest films, from Videodrome (1983) to Dead Ringers (1988) to Naked Lunch (1991), it’s always tinged with a keen sense of humor. The Canadian director’s latest film, The Shrouds, plays like a long and elaborate practical joke. If the movie feels like it becomes continuously less coherent, then you’d be right — and that’s part of The Shrouds’ charm, frustrating as it may be. As with Naked Lunch, a mix of comedy and tragedy is rampant in Cronenberg’s 2024 film.

Much of The Shrouds’ humor comes from the fact that Cronenberg’s film unmistakably exists in the current online moment. The protagonist, Karsh (Vincent Cassel), is a millionaire tech guru who runs a “cyber cemetery” with its own app-controlled digital tombstones. He also drives a Tesla, wears mostly clean black shirts and grieves the death of his beloved wife, Becca (Diane Kruger). Karsh essentially functions as a stand-in for Cronenberg, with his slicked-back grey hair, a bony face, an intense demeanor (but soft way of speaking) and a love for decaying and mutilated bodies. He maintains Becca’s presence in his life by monitoring her decaying corpse through voyeuristic video technology within her coffin. Mortality has increasingly become a running obsession for many legendary filmmakers, but Cronenberg seems wholly engrossed in what it means for the future.

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The Shrouds comically (and frustratingly) displays an incongruity between characters. Various conversations feel overly rehearsed, and so this aspect embodies the incoherence that is so common in our tech-commanded online world. Several characters in Karsh’s life, including Becca’s twin sister, Terry (also Kruger), and Terry’s ex-husband, Maury (Guy Pearce), become increasingly paranoid and turn to technology and geopolitics as a means of navigating a world that seems to make less and less sense. Somebody is seemingly out to get Karsh and ruin his business, but he doesn’t know who. The mystery’s winding narrative incorporates bigger and bigger entities and more and more unreliable sources as time goes on. Karsh also begins to hallucinate upon spotting his deceased wife in various places and with various people, including his virtual A.I. assistant, Hunny (voiced by Kruger).

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Cronenberg’s mastery of using double-roles for actors in Naked Lunch and Dead Ringers shows itself again in The Shrouds. Kruger displays commanding range in the way she makes Terry and Becca feel similar enough to be sisters but different enough in their personal quirks to have distance between them as people. She plays Terry with a level of suspicion — averted eyes, arms folded, a wistful look — that ultimately transforms into something closer and closer to Becca’s own personality as the character’s relationship grows closer with Karsh and they become intimate. Kruger’s voice for Hunny is hilariously artificial; a jovial touch of servitude that parodies Siri and Alexa.

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The typical Cronenberg staples of body dysmorphia paint the landscape of his futuristic visions. He considers “technology” and “alien” as interchangeable terms, as they are both the direct source of terror and insecurity within humans. In The Shrouds, the use of technology to control instinctive human aspects torments Karsh. In that distinct Cronenbergian mix of horror and comedy, Hunny seems to take on a life of her own by imitating Becca’s amputations and injuries that resulted from her cancer. It’s an uncomfortable and farcical concept, one that represents the ultimate terror for Karsh: A.I.’s ability to manipulate the link between life and death through a mind of its own.

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When Cronenberg expressed in an interview that he views cinema as a way “to see dead people,” could this fear be a part of it? In the cinema landscape, tech companies shove themselves into the art world through automated scripts and by resurrecting dead performers with holographs. If cinema is a cemetery, then we are dangerously close to Karsh’s cyber coffins. And as technology grows and the discourse rages on, the noise becomes deafening. Much of what makes The Shrouds equally interesting and irritating is that Cronenberg seems to see conspiracy, confusion and competing dialogue as something impenetrable. What remains is a movie that becomes the thing it comedically criticizes.

Soham Gadre (@SohamGadre) is a writer/filmmaker based in Washington, D.C. He has contributed to publications such as Bustle, Frameland and Film Inquiry. Soham is currently in production for his first short film. All of his film and writing work can be found at extrasensoryfilms.com.

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