The Shrouds

A high-tech graveyard in The Shrouds (Distributed by Janus Films and Sideshow)

Death is so final. When a loved one passes on, we have our memories, pictures, mementos, but the actual person is gone. What if we could hang on a little longer? What if there was a way to stay connected to their physical being, not spiritually, but literally? Would that trap someone in the past? Or help them move on? The concept inspires a lot of intriguing thoughts. The always interesting Canadian writer/director David Cronenberg plays with these ideas in promising, yet ultimately empty, ways in the drama The Shrouds. Grief and control are the primary concepts he examines, though he doesn’t fully see them through. He crowds it with material about lust, paranoia and conspiracies in a half-baked plot that doesn’t really go anywhere. Cronenberg is definitely an original. His creativity is what leads to a movie like this feeling so disappointing as the final credits begin to roll.

Karsh lost his wife, Becca, to cancer. Crushed by grief, and unwilling to say a final goodbye, he designed a special burial shroud that contains a series of cameras, allowing him to see his wife’s corpse inside her grave. He buys a cemetery and sells these shrouds, complete with monitors the family can access on the gravestones. When his cemetery is vandalized, it sends Karsh down a rabbit hole in search of all sorts of truths.

With Karsh, Cronenberg presents a man who has no interest in moving on from his late wife, yet still desires intimacy with the living. Control doesn’t become a prominent part of the story until closer to the end, but it is always lingering. While he lost his wife to disease, he refuses to let her move on without him. It is not just about grief. There is comfort in knowing he can see her whenever he wants. Until her grave is hacked, there is never a moment when he is unable to view what is occurring with her body. Unfortunately, The Shrouds (115 minutes, without the end credits) does not focus on how his grief and his need for control intersect. Instead, it throws in two other characters and some plot complications that muddy the waters.

Karsh (Vincent Cassel) and Terry (Diane Kruger)

Those two characters are Terry, Becca’s sister, and Terry’s estranged ex-husband, Maury. Terry is the far more interesting of the pair. Her and Karsh have bonded in their grief. However, she has tried harder to move on. Their relationship has a bit of a twist to it because both Becca and Terry are played by Diane Kruger (who also voices Karsh’s AI assistant, Hunny, meaning he is at all times surrounded by images of his dead wife). Becca’s body obviously has a strong pull for Karsh, so what does it do to him to see it very much alive, while at the same time seeing it decomposing? That is an intriguing angle Cronenberg does not do a whole lot with.

Maury, a tech genius who helped set up Karsh’s camera system and is still obsessed with Terry, is more of a plot device who adds complications, without building upon the themes. He and Terry are varying levels of paranoid, coming up with theories as to what really happened to Becca and who targeted the graves. As a meditation on the decaying of the human body, due to sickness or death, The Shrouds does have some engaging conversations. The story just goes in too many uninvolving directions, never making it anywhere revealing or satisfying. Cronenberg continues to have fascinating thoughts. They don’t amount to much substance this time.

2¾ out of 5

Cast:

Vincent Cassel as Karsh

Diane Kruger as Becca, Terry and Hunny

Guy Pearce as Maury

Sandrine Holt as Soo-Min

Written/Directed by David Cronenberg