‘The Shrouds’ Review: What Happens When David Cronenberg Takes Us Six Feet Under

April 15, 2025

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , 1 Comment

Til death do they part? (CREDIT: Sideshow and Janus Films)

Starring: Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Holt

Director: David Cronenberg

Running Time: 119 Minutes

Rating: R for Sex and Nudity in Both the Here and Now and the Beyond, and a Little Bit of Violence

Release Date: April 18, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Have you ever wanted to peek at your dead loved ones while they’re resting underground? Well, if you lived in the world of The Shrouds, you’d be in luck! That’s because this is a movie about a businessman named Karsh Relikh (Vincent Cassel) who has invented GraveTech, which allows people to keep an eye on the decaying corpses of their dearly departed. This mission is pretty personal for him, considering his desire to be buried alongside his late wife Becca (Diane Kruger) following her untimely death from cancer. But his focus on the hereafter might be keeping him blind to the strange developments on this earthly plane, as he finds himself getting dangerously closer to Becca’s sister Terry (also Kruger) while his brother-in-law Maury (Guy Pearce) rants and raves about some sort of conspiracy.

What Made an Impression?: The Cronenberg of It All: The Shrouds is more psychological horror than body horror, or rather, I should say, that ratio leans more psychological than usual by David Cronenberg Standards. There’s definitely plenty of corporeal shenanigans, though, particularly when Karsh keeps seeing a vision of a gradually more and more surgically reduced Becca.
Guy Pearces a Bullseye: Maury is one of those characters that makes you go, “Should we just ignore this guy, or should we instead be listening very closely to every single thing that he says?” Pearce understands the assignment and is compellingly confusing.
Why, Why, Why?: Is GraveTech a good idea? Cronenberg certainly doesn’t seem to be endorsing it. And based on what we can glean from Karsh’s experience, I can’t say I recommend it. But maybe there’s a way to handle this breakthrough more sensitively? I don’t think it has to make your day-to-day so woozy and surreal. We all grieve in our own ways.
Losing the Plot: The action is driven by an act of vandalism at the GraveTech graves and an attempt to locate the guilty parties. But I got the feeling that Karsh and by extension Cronenberg weren’t really all that interested in finding the answer to that question. Instead, The Shrouds is much more concerned about the director’s continued interest in reflecting upon what happens when we give our bodies and minds over to emerging technologies.
It’s Complicated: In conclusion, if you hear the hook of GraveTech and wonder, “How will this make everyone’s relationships messier?”, then The Shrouds has been designed to cater to you.

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Corpses

David Cronenberg Looks Back, Ahead, Inward, and Outward with These Here ‘Crimes of the Future’

June 1, 2022

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Crimes of the Future (CREDIT: NEON)

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart, Don McKellar, Scott Speedman

Director: David Cronenberg

Running Time: 107 Minutes

Rating: R for Body Horror at Its Finest

Release Date: June 3, 2022 (Theaters)

Who’s ready to party like it’s 1983 and strap in for some vintage David Cronenberg? Of course, the answer to that question is: Everybody! Alas, though, maybe not. We Cronenberg-heads are in fact a select breed. But there are enough of us that the arrival of Crimes of the Future in 2022 is cause for celebration as we harken back to the director’s 70s/80s bodily manipulation heyday. It even has the same name as one of Cronenberg’s earliest features! Despite that shared moniker, be forewarned that this isn’t a remake. I haven’t seen the previous Crimes, but based on the synopsis, it seems pretty clear that they don’t really have anything to do with each other, beyond the fact that Cronenberg envisions multiple ways to run afoul of the law in the coming dystopias.

The premise is both straightforward, and completely bizarre. Performance artist couple Saul and Caprice (Viggo Mortensen and Léa Seydoux) have a regular live stage show in which they grow and remove new organs in Saul’s body. Meanwhile, a subculture has developed around evolving the human body to be able to eat plastic (with delicious-looking purple candy bars aplenty). Okay, maybe that premise is straightforward only if you’re already a permanent resident of Cronenberg World. But the filmmaking coaxes you into thinking that all this is normal, starting with the opening scene of Saul hanging out at home in a newfangled hammock to recover from all that organ removal. Watch out, though, because here comes Kristen Stewart and Don McKellar on hand as a couple of “National Organ Registry” investigators to indicate that maybe this isn’t the most advisable practice around. But pretty much anyone who’s skeptical ends up getting seduced at some point in a sleekly sexy sort of way.

This is exactly the sort of vision that Cronenberg originally established his reputation on. It’s been a while, though, since he’s made something within this classic vein, even as he’s been steadily working every decade for the last 50-plus years. It’s a joy just to be immersed in something this trippy and transportative, even if the central mystery plot is a little hard to parse.  But I can forgive that thanks to the strength of the world building.

The major, somewhat disturbing, difference this time around compared to Cronenberg’s breakthrough classics is the cinematography. The bumpy film stocks of yore imbued the likes of Rabid and The Brood with a vibe that they’d been illicitly smuggled into cinemas, whereas the digital cleanness of Crimes gives off a sense that we’re home and safe among friends. But we’re not home, unless your last name is Frankenstein. Just as Videodrome cried out “Long live the new flesh,” Crimes of the Future declares “Surgery is the new sex,” and we’re all going to have to deal with that as best as we see fit.

Crimes of the Future (2022) is Recommended If You Like: Classic David Cronenberg (He’s back, baby!)

Grade: 4 out of 5 Organs