34/26

Diane Kruger replaced Léa Seydoux in her role

Scenario

Karsh, an innovative businessman and grieving widower, builds a device to contact the dead in a shroud. IMDb editor Arno Kazarian offers brief reviews of the 12 films he screened at the 2024 New York Film Festival, including Anora and the dangerous, strangely erotic Misericordia. Mentioned on the Film Junk Podcast: Episode 961: In Brutal Nature + TIFF 2024 (2024). Compared to the very mediocre “Crimes of the Future,” Cronenberg’s earlier work and his return to the body horror subgenre that made him famous, “The Shrouds” is about doing something again…acceptable, maybe that’s the right word?

But it’s still a tedious task to follow our rather dull hero through any sort of investigation that gets more tedious by the minute

But just like the previous film, in almost every scene of “The Shrouds,” you’ll probably think of another similar Cronenberg film that probably did it better. You might remember the amazing “Crash” in particular, which dealt with similar themes of macabre voyeurism and sexual fascination with death, physical corruption, and wounds in a much more memorable way. It’s the curse of older, talented filmmakers that their latest work is constantly compared to their earlier masterpieces, but it’s also inevitable when those filmmakers are blatantly lacking in fresh ideas. That the far more expansive story compared to “Crimes of the Future” leads to nowhere, literally, isn’t a huge problem—it’s merely an epiphenomenon of playing with more fundamental themes.

I challenge you to really care about the answers surrounding the many mysteries at the heart of “The Shrouds” Not that you should expect any answers

It’s important that our protagonist’s psyche is made clear in the opening scene (and I believe the closing scene, which entertained some of the packed audience by dropping the story rather spectacularly in the middle of nowhere). These two scenes convey the idea that the story is really about processing the grief of losing a loved one, which makes sense considering Cronenberg drew on the death of his wife when crafting this story. But again, it all feels like a late variation (if not an actual rehash) of things Cronenberg has already done and said, rather than a new, late take on the same themes. What annoys me most is that the protagonist never feels like he’s really worried inside about what’s happening to him; Vincent Cassel, certainly on a par with James Woods or James Spader, is fine as a cool, cool tech entrepreneur with an interest in minimalism and cryptonecrophilia, but when it comes to expressing compulsion and fascination, there just isn’t enough to sustain the film.

Worse, his supposed fascination never seems real, authentic, or compelling

No descent into the shadows for our hero, no journey through the unexplored, disgusting swamps of his soul—or of modern society. And that, to me, is the most disappointing thing about “The Shrouds.” How the other pole of the director’s work, technology, is never addressed. His best horror films explore the collective unconscious and how we humans relate to technology. How there’s no real opposition between the organic and the machine-like, but a genuine coming symbiosis.

Nothing like that, with an interesting premise that is never really explored

How our instincts and unconscious desires to appropriate our devices, connect them, and do unspeakable things with them mean to us. With cell phones, self-driving Teslas, and personal AI, we seem to be checking off uninspiring boxes. Artificial Intelligence.