{"id":20181697,"date":"2025-04-30T00:09:19","date_gmt":"2025-04-30T07:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.metrosiliconvalley.com\/?p=20181697"},"modified":"2025-04-30T00:25:26","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T07:25:26","slug":"david-cronenberg-the-shrouds-film-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metrosiliconvalley.com\/david-cronenberg-the-shrouds-film-review\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Graveyard Shift with Cronenberg\u2019s \u2018The Shrouds\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Writer-director David Cronenberg, the veteran specialist in \u201cbody horror\u201d tales, sicker-than-thou science fiction and disturbing investigations into the latest trends in psychological torment, has recently spent his cinematic capital on things like Crimes of the Future<\/em> or Maps to the Stars<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is, big-picture scenarios about modern people entangled in science-based predicaments. Cronenberg\u2019s characters are always in some sort of jeopardy. They have good reason to feel apprehensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that in mind, Shrouds<\/em> takes us into the life and times of a wealthy, renowned technocrat named Karsh (played by French actor Vincent Cassel), whose latest venture sounds like some type of techie joke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to his career as a producer of industrial videos, Karsh has gone into the cemetery business with a property called The Shrouds at Gravetech. The experience begins when a customer buys a burial plot for, say, a recently deceased loved one. The remains are carefully wrapped in a special shroud equipped with the very latest sensors and cameras, connected online to the company, and then interred on the company\u2019s nicely landscaped property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using that setup, the survivors can view live video of the body as it goes through various stages\u2014decomposition, etc.\u2014in the ground, on their own computers or the handsomely mounted graveside monitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s at this point in the film that we ask: Can you run that by us again? You mean someone is willing to pay premium prices\u2014Karsh\u2019s cemetery is expensively decorated, and even boasts an on-site restaurant with eerie \u201ccorpse\u201d sculptures\u2014to bury someone in the ground, and then check in on the stiff from time to time? On video? Just to see how things are progressing? Who the hell would want to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Karsh would. His late beloved partner Becca is buried there with tracking devices embedded in and around her remains, and he often visits her resting place on Shroudcam for a high-res view of her decaying body. Any prospective \u201ccorpse voyeur\u201d could do the same with their own loved one, for a price. Business seems to be thriving at The Shrouds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the morbid atmosphere Karsh is surrounded by several friends and business associates when he isn\u2019t zooming through the countryside in his luxury sports car (the film was shot in Cronenberg\u2019s native province of Ontario, Canada). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prominent among Karsh\u2019s crowd is Becca\u2019s sister Terry (Diane Kruger, who also portrays Becca in flashbacks), a dog groomer who\u2019s obviously interested in the boss\u2014although he doesn\u2019t reciprocate. Terry mostly flutters around Karsh like the slo-mo moths in the film\u2019s opening credits. She has sexual jealousy memories of him from before; he doesn\u2019t seem to notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terry\u2019s ex, a seemingly amiable nerd named Maury (Guy Pearce) occasionally pops up too. Most curious of the hangers-on is Honey, Karsh\u2019s AI assistant, sometimes a perky, inquisitive pixie, other times an animated koala, but always busy\u2014perhaps too busily\u2014meddling in Karsh\u2019s affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The emotional weather report for all these two-dimensional characters changes drastically when Karsh is introduced to a fellow entrepreneur named Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt), a blind but very perceptive woman who runs her own cyber-graveyard in Budapest, Hungary. Through the worldly Soo-Min, Karsh gets up to speed on potential international rivals, including a Chinese mega-corporation and some teenage Russian hackers who may be behind the recent vandalism at Gravetech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cronenberg obviously delights in the unlikely setting of high-tech undertakers and overseas communist plots (we learn that the late Becca was once the victim of a Stalinist mind experiment) but mostly shuffles distractedly through Karsh\u2019s living, breathing contemporaries. Cool, calm, collected Soo-Min is different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Shrouds<\/em>, not one of the filmmaker\u2019s most compelling outings, startles us with queasy-making imagery that gives way to a chilly quasi-love-story. Neither side compensates for, or even seems to understand, the other. Maybe there\u2019s a pertinent narrative buried somewhere in the relationship of Karsh and Soo-Min. Finding it might take hard work. Keep digging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now playing at the AMC Eastridge 15 in San Jose and the AMC Mercado 20 in Santa Clara.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Shrouds\u2019 takes us into the life and times of a technocrat (Vincent Cassel) whose latest venture sounds like some type of techie joke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14789,"featured_media":20181699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"0","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[38],"tags":[511,14846],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n