33/10
Diane Kruger replaced Léa Seydoux in her role
Line of Events
Karsh, an innovative businessman and grieving widower, constructs a device to contact the dead in cloth. Film Junk Podcast Reference: Episode 961: In a Violent Nature + TIFF 2024 (2024). Compared to the very mediocre Future Crimes, Cronenberg’s previous work and his return to the body horror subgenre that made him famous, The Shrouds is a return to something…acceptable might be the right word? But like that previous film, almost every scene of Shroud is likely to make you think of another similar Cronenberg film that probably did it better. You may especially remember the great movie Crash, which dealt more memorably with similar themes of macabre voyeurism and sexual fascination with death, physical decay and wounds.
Not that you should expect any answers anyway
It’s the bane of older, successful filmmakers that their latest works are constantly compared to their previous masterpieces, but it’s also inevitable when those filmmakers clearly run out of fresh ideas. The fact that the story, which is much more sophisticated than in Future Crimes, literally goes nowhere, not a big deal – it’s just a side game with more underlying themes. But it’s still a boring journey, following our rather boring protagonist through some kind of investigation that gets more boring by the minute. I challenge you to actually care about the answers to the many mysteries in heart of the Shroud. What matters is the psyche of our protagonist, which becomes clear in the opening scene (and I suspect in the final one, which had a portion of the packed room laughing because he pretty spectacularly dropped the story in the middle of nowhere).
Perhaps worse, its supposed fascination never feels real, authentic, or exhausting
These two scenes actually convey the idea that the story is actually about dealing with the grief of the death of a loved one, which makes sense considering that Cronenberg was inspired by the death of his wife when he was coming up with the story. And yet, again, it all feels like a late variation (if not a repetition) of things Cronenberg has already done and said, rather than a new, late perspective on those themes. What bothers me most is that the protagonist never feels like he what’s happening to him really troubles him deep down; Vincent Cassel, certainly on par with James Woods or James Spader, is pretty good as a cool, cold tech entrepreneur who loves minimalism and crypto-necrophilia, but when it comes to expressing some kind of compulsion and fascination , there’s simply not enough to sustain the film. There’s no descent to the dark side for our hero, no journey through the uncharted, disgusting swamps of his soul – or the soul of today’s society. And that, to me, is what disappoints me most about The Shrouds.
unspeakable things with them
How the other half of the director’s oeuvre, technology, is never really addressed. His best horror films explore the collective unconscious and the way we humans interact with technology. How there is no real opposition between the organic and the mechanical, but rather a real symbiosis in the making. How we are designed by our instincts and unconscious desires to appropriate our devices, connect them, and make them work. There’s nothing like it here, with an interesting premise that’s never really been explored.
Part of the plot revolves around an AI assistant, as does much else
Having cell phones, self-driving Teslas, and personal AI feels like you’re checking off uninspired boxes. , should have been covered in more detail, although I get the idea – behind our machines and supposedly autonomous technology are us and our unacknowledged, shameful desires. It’s a shame that “Coverings” chooses to stay on the surface instead of digging up the corpses that haunt our fantasies.