There is no getting around it, David Cronenberg’s THE SHROUDS is a disappointment. Based on Cronenberg's own feeling after losing his wife, the film is the story of a man dealing with the grief he feels after his wife died. He uses his tech savvy to create burial shrouds for the dead that allow people to watch their loved ones decay. As he tries to reconnect to life the cemetery is vandalized and conspiratorial plots involving the technology are possibly hatched.
This is the first film where Cronenberg lost sight of his characters for the plot. Perhaps this is the result of this being intended to be a miniseries for Netflix that got axed or perhaps it’s just Cronenberg wrote himself in the corner. Either way this film takes a long time before focusing on the characters and then in the final third it loses them again.
To be certain when the characters take front and center the film soars- the scene where the blind wife of one of Vincent Cassel’s clients touch his face was one of the best scenes in all of this year’s New York Film Festival and the sex scenes are both erotic and manage to drive the plot – but the truth is the film is too interested in the technical stuff to really work. In the words of Hubert Vigilla, with whom I saw the film, it’s like watching THE FLY and having it be about how the pods work.
I’ve been a fan of Cronenberg for decades and this is the first time one of his movies ended and I felt nothing. Both Hubert and myself were left staring at the screen by Cronenberg’s choice of ending point for the film since it doesn’t feel like a stop but simply mid action abandonment.
While the film is well made and has moments it really isn’t a good film. If the interpersonal bits weren’t as good as they are this would probably be the first truly bad David Cronenberg film.
For die hard fans of the director only.
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