David Cronenberg’s latest film The Shrouds is here after being released in the US months prior – and it has been described as ‘horrific’ and ‘fearless.’
The revered director – best known for Crash, The Fly, Dead Ringers, and many other genre films – explores death and grief to devastating effect following the story of Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a creative entrepreneur who lost his wife Becca (Diane Kruger).
He developed a technology known as The Shrouds, which allows users to monitor a deceased person’s body as it decomposes via an app called GraveTech.
After graves are destroyed in a GraveTech cemetery, including Becca’s, Karsh begins to question if her death was part of a larger conspiracy as he investigates the attack.
It has proved to be a deeply personal project for Cronenberg, inspired by his wife, Carolyn Cronenberg, who died of cancer at age 67 in 2017.
After being released in the US back in April, the film has finally arrived in the UK as of today – but be warned, it has been hailed ‘expansively unsettling’ and ‘hollowing.’
It holds a 76% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critics’ consensus reading: ‘Ruminating on the love within loss, The Shrouds is a personal and peculiar examination of grief by director David Cronenberg.’
In their review, Empire wrote: ‘It’s a hypnotic descent into the darkness of grief, punctuated by perverse Cronenbergian pleasures.’
The Washington Post said The Shrouds ‘throbs with raw, human, horrific honesty’, while the San Jose Mercury pondered ‘How lucky we are to have this boundary pusher still thinking up such bold and provocative films.’
Globe and Mail boldly stated: ‘With The Shrouds, the filmmaker — not only one of Canada’s greatest creations, but cinema’s, too — has delivered what might be his career-defining masterpiece.’
The Ringer heaped praise on Cronenberg, adding: ‘Like 2022’s superb Crimes of the Future, The Shrouds serves as a reminder that, at 81 years old, Cronenberg is still one of the world’s great filmmakers: bold, uncompromising, clever, and fearless.’
Speaking to Variety, Cronenberg explained how he developed the concept of The Shrouds and how the film was almost a Netflix series.
‘It was pre-pandemic. I went to L.A. to pitch it to Netflix. At that point, it was a well-formed idea, but it wasn’t a script yet,’ he revealed.
‘The people I talked to there were very receptive, and Netflix gave me the OK to start writing what they call the prototype, which was the first episode of what was then going to be a series.
‘And then they liked that enough to tell me to go ahead and write the second episode. After that, they decided not to go forward for various reasons.’
Despite the subject matter of the film and its inspiration, the History of Violence director said he ‘did not experience any catharsis’ making it, describing grief as ‘forever.’
‘I don’t really think of art as therapy. I don’t think it works that way,’ he continued.
‘If you’re an artist, everything you make, you work out of your life experience, no matter what that is. Whether you’re rehashing something from your distant past or your present circumstances, there’s always creative energy that can be mined from your life. ‘
The Shrouds is in cinemas now.
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