29/37
Diane Kruger replaced Leah Seydoux in her role
Narrative
IMDb Editor Arno Kazarian offers up quick takes on 12 movies he screened at the 2024 New York Film Festival, including Anora and the dangerous, curiously erotic Misericordia.. Referenced in Film Junk Podcast: Episode 961: In a Violent Nature + TIFF 2024 (2024). Compared to the very mediocre "Crimes of the Future", Cronenberg's previous effort and return to the body horror subgenre that made him famous, "The Shrouds" is a return to doing something… acceptable might be the right word? But like in that previous film, in almost every scene of "The Shrouds" you are likely to think of another similar Cronenberg movie that, very probably, did it better.
But it’s still a slog to follow our rather bland protagonist through an investigation of sorts that becomes more tedious by the minute
You might, most notably, be reminded of the awesome "Crash", which dealt with similar themes of macabre voyeurism and sexual fascination for death, physical corruption and wounds much more memorably. It’s the curse of older, more accomplished filmmakers that their latest offerings are ceaselessly compared to their earlier masterpieces, but it’s also inevitable when said filmmakers are so clearly out of fresh ideas. That the story, which is far more elaborate than in "Crimes of the Future", goes literally nowhere is no major issue – it’s only an epiphenomenon to play with more fundamental themes. I challenge you to actually care about any of the answers surrounding the many mysteries at the heart of "The Shrouds".
Not that you should expect any answers anyway
What matters is our protagonist’s psyche, which is made clear by the opening scene (and I guess by the very last one, which made part of the packed auditorium laugh by its rather spectacular dropping of the story in the middle of nowhere ). Those two scenes do work in conveying the idea that the story is really about processing one’s grief over the passing of a loved one, which makes sense given that Cronenberg drew from the death of his wife to dream up the story. Yet, again, everything feels like a late variation (if not actual repetition) of things Cronenberg already did and said, rather than a new, late-age angle on these same issues. What bugs me most is how the protagonist never feels like he’s really troubled in his psychic core by what’s happening to him; Vincent Cassel, who is certainly the equivalent of James Woods or James Spader, is pretty good as the cool, cold tech entrepreneur who’s into minimalism and crypto necrophilia, but when it comes to expressing any kind of compulsion and fascination, there simply is too little to sustain the movie.
Even worse perhaps, his supposed fascination never feels real, authentic, consuming
No descent into the shadow side for our hero, no journey through the unexplored, gross swamps of his soul – or of contemporary society’s. And that, to me, is the most disappointing thing about "The Shrouds". How the other pole of the director’s work, technology, is never actually addressed. His best horror films explore the collective unconscious and how we human beings relate to technology.
The AI
How there is no real opposition between the organic and the machinic but an actual symbiosis-in-coming. How we are meant by our instincts and unconscious desires to reappropriate and merge and do unspeakable things with our gadgets. Nothing like that here, with an interesting premise that is never actually explored. Featuring mobile phones, self-driving Teslas and a personal AI just feels like checking uninspired boxes.