In a vast sea of film releases that are either sequels, reboots or films connected to established brands coming this July, it's good that the movie going public can rely on legendary director David Cronenberg to bring cinemas a film that's not only completely original but characteristically unhinged to boot. In The Shrouds, we are introduced to Karsh, played by Vincent Cassel, who's the inventor of "The Shroud"; a cloak that corpses are placed into upon their burials that allow the grieving families of the deceased to see their loved ones rot in the ground in real time on their smartphones. This invention was inspired by the untimely death of his wife, Becca (Diane Kruger), who he still continues to mourn. While demonstrating the Shroud's capabilities to a blind date, Karsh notices that the corpse of his beloved wife has been tampered with, which leads him to investigate who could have done this. As he tries to find out what happened, one of his Shroud connected graveyards is vandalised beginning a wider search to find the culprits and to uncover the possible conspiracy behind these mysterious events.
The story, or rather the concept at least, of The Shrouds is by far its strongest point. Aside from being an example of the classic inventor being taunted by his invention trope (which Cronenberg is all too familiar with) it's really quite unlike any other film out there. The novel concept is bound to raise the eyebrows of many an intrepid film watcher. However, the execution of said story is the film's downfall. It starts off ok, with the explanation of the Shrouds, setting up Karsh's life and work as well as the world itself, but also carries on with some more interesting elements concerning the morals of monitoring a corpse as it naturally decays. The middle of the film though grinds the story to a halt as there's no longer any progression with the mystery of the grave vandals and instead the film decides to focus on Karsh mourning his wife and moving on from her in some rather unseemly ways. While the end is quite possibly the worst part as it throws around several possible answers to the film's central mystery without really confirming which is the actual answer (even going so far as to say that one possibility was a complete fabrication and, ergo, a waste of screen time). This is all concluded with an ending scene which is beyond baffling as well as being haltingly abrupt.
Cronenberg clearly had a lot to say in this film, he's juggling a lot of themes; faith, death, the afterlife, technology as well as the rise of AI and most obviously, greif. There's just too much for this two hour runtime to handle and in the end it creates a jumbled, convoluted mess that doesn't know what it wants to be. It doesn't help though that his directing style hasn't evolved much since the 1980s. Like in his previous film, Crimes of the Future, the production design and world building is impeccable but the way in which its shot isn't kinetic or exciting and makes for an already overstuffed film to become torturously sedate.
The direction can also be blamed for what are some of the worst performances of the year. Vincent Cassel, a legendary French actor, is reduced to wood here, reading off all his lines as if they were being shown to him off camera. Guy Pearce, a recent Oscar nominee no less, plays Karsh's brother in law and is almost insufferable as a cliched, snivelling computer geek in a dreadful homage to Jamie Foxx's Electro from The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Diane Kruger comes out of The Shrouds with a bit less of a stain on her reputation, being the emotional heart of the film as Karsh's late wife Becca, who appears in tragic flashbacks throughout the film. Though, she's not fully unscathed as she also plays the triple role of Becca's twin sister, Terry and Karsh's AI helper, Hunny. Both of these characters are onenote and weird in a discomforting way rather than an endearing one, though this is definitely the fault of the script over Kruger for the most part.
The script struggles to make its characters likeable or in any way empathetic, rather making them dull or even sometimes creepy to witness for the majority of the film's runtime. Nobody talks like a real human being, instead all sounding like robots, blurting out all their thoughts and feelings in expositional ravings, ironically making it hard to distinguish the human characters from the AI ones. Karsh especially makes a few bizarre choices near the film's conclusion and the scene in which he's introduced has him just monologuing, explaining his back story and the titular Shrouds, giving no room for any nuance in his character outside of him being the focus of the film's narrative. The rest of the characters seem to serve only as manifestations of the film's attempts at tackling its various themes and to taunt or seduce Karsh or each other in variously egregious or boring ways. Unsurprisingly, to add to that, the film's female characters are all there simply as romantic partners for Karsh and are often shown without any clothes on.
The Shrouds feels like David Cronenberg is reminiscing about his heyday. If you took away the modern cameras and special effects, the film wouldn't seem out of place next to the likes of The Fly or Videodrome. Like a lot of the auteur's previous work, it tackles big ideas in a very melodramatic way, but the directing and writing can't support the weight of the film's vision and collapses under the pressure. The Shrouds is a disappointment for Cronenberg and film fans alike as it doesn't provide any sort of enjoyable respite from this summer of franchises.
★★
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