David Cronenberg’s latest film, “The Shrouds,” delves into the complexities of grief, surveillance, and technology. The movie follows Vincent Cassel as Karsh, an entrepreneur who invents technology that monitors his deceased wife’s body after her death from cancer.
Cronenberg’s film explores themes of love, obsession, and fixation, blurring the lines between life and death, emotion and pathology, biology and technology. The tone is often dry and macabre, with moments of humor, but also introduces thought-provoking ambiguity.
Karsh’s business, GraveTech, involves burying the dead in shrouds that transmit images to screen-embedded headstones, allowing viewers to watch a livestream of a decomposing body. This technology becomes an obsession for Karsh, who uses it to check on his wife’s decay.
As the plot unfolds, Karsh notices strange growths on Becca’s corpse and begins to investigate who put them there. The movie takes several turns, making it difficult to discern its true intentions. However, it ultimately returns to exploring the human need to accept death and the consequences of fixation.
The film features a cast of complex characters, including Karsh’s relationships with women, which are marked by an unhealthy obsession. A blind Soo-Min and a creepy AI assistant, Hunny, also make appearances, adding to the sense of unease.
While “The Shrouds” may be overstuffed and clunky at times, its exploration of technology as a means to disengage with reality is unsettling. The film is a thought-provoking commentary on our relationship with death and the consequences of our obsessions.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/movies/the-shrouds-review-david-cronenberg.html