The Shrouds

SPOILERS!

2024's THE SHROUDS is a far from perfect offering from writer/director David Cronenberg, but I'm glad he remains able to continue to realize his bold, personal vision.  Even in his early eighties.  Damned impressive, and the film retains his well known trademarks.  The clinical dissertations.  Mordant humor. Sexual predilections.  And yes, some awkward dialogue.  As Cronenberg's wife had passed several years earlier, I expected this film to play as a somber meditation on death; in its best moments, it succeeds to that end.

Karsh (Vincent Cassel), whose wife Becca (Diane Kruger) succumbed to cancer four years before, has developed a unusual service for the bereaved - live three dimensional images of the deceased's corpse in its casket. Created by a high tech shroud. "GraveTech" has a monitor on the tombstone (and a smartphone app, of course) on which to view these images.  Karsh is obsessed with watching his wife's decomposition and has recurring dreams of her returning to their bedroom, minus a left arm and breast, which had been removed pre mortem by one Dr. Jerry Eckler (Steve Switzman), who was also her lover.

Such obsession makes it difficult to find a girlfriend.  Karsh remains close with Becca's twin sister Terry (also Kruger), a dog groomer.  Platonic.  For awhile, anyway  Then how will Terry's ex, Maury (Guy Pearce), who wrote GraveTech's code and created an A.I. virtual assistant for Karsh, take such news? He's seems a bit mad from the moment we meet him.

Backing up a bit, someone vandalizes the GT cemetery, including Becca's headstone. Politically or religiously motivated? Russians? A disgruntled client?

More plot here than expected. I felt it got too twisty for its own good. Never given any satisfying development.  There are several elements of tech intrusion, and plenty of conspiracy theories (which cause one character to get exceptionally horny).  While they do co-exist nicely with quiet moments of mourning, of an overall elegy, I felt everything came apart by Act III.  During which another character goes off the rails and then someone else summates him as a mere shmuck, and that's that. When the film spent so much time working up his complexity.  Meant to be comedic?

Also bothersome, if amusing - Cassel, who is obviously intended to be a fictional correlate of Cronenberg (right down to his appearance), also seems to be channeling Christopher Walken.  Similar vocal phrasing and mannerisms.  Odd. 

Despite any deficiencies, THE SHROUD is a provacative, fascinating, and valuable film.