J Paul Johnson
Every David Cronenberg film is, I suppose, its own acquired taste. There will be those who will blanch at the brilliant body horror of Videodrome or Scanners, even in as commercial a vehicle as his hit remake of The Fly; others might find his more mainstream-minded filmmaking, like the graphic-novel adaptation A History of Violence or the historical drama A Dangerous Method too wan in comparison to his more grisly sojourns. Last year’s The Shrouds, which debuted at Cannes but found theatrical release only in France and Canada, is an acquired taste as well, but the lengths to which one must go to acquire said taste feel even farther afield, than, say, a man turning himself into a human fly. This week, The Shrouds receives a Blu-ray release from Criterion via its newly-renamed “Criterion Premieres” label.
If you haven’t heard of Criterion Premieres, the label is what had been, for a scant two years, named “Janus Contemporaries“: beginning in 2023, Criterion joined with Janus Films in presenting this new line of home-video editions of first-run theatrical releases, fresh from theaters, following their streaming premieres on the Criterion Channel. Those have included some of the world’s best and/or most enigmatic releases in recent memory, among them EO, The Bears, Godland, The Eight Mountains, Tori and Lokita, Afire, Lynch/Oz, The Beast, Vermiglio, and Misericordia—an impressive list, indeed. Instead of loading up on the archival and newly-commissioned supplements for which The Criterion Collection is known, and instead of offering 4K UHD presentations of the films, these lower-budget discs retail for $29.95 (Blu-ray) and $24.95 (DVD) and feature, typically, just one extra: a “Meet the Filmmakers” featurette originally produced for streaming on The Criterion Channel.
It makes all kinds of sense for the two longstanding business partners Criterion, with its focus on physical media and streaming, and Janus, with its on theatrical distribution and exhibition, to collaborate in this way to bring new films to audiences quickly. And a film like The Shrouds, directed by one of cinema’s most eclectic auteurs and mostly unseen by audiences except in France and Canada, seems a perfect candidate to release alongside the abovementioned films by the Dardenne Brothers, Jafar Pahini, Maura Delpero, and Bertrand Bonelli. The Shrouds, though, unlike most of these, is a film that is so deeply personal it is almost impossible to embrace. To watch it is as profoundly discomforting as its main conceit, in which an entrepreneur/widower develops an app that allows him to watch, in real time and high definition, his beloved deceased’s remains slowly decompose in her casket.
“There’s an app for that,” the saying goes, and usually there is, whether we wish our personal devices to book a flight, listen to a podcast, open a door, connect with friends or strangers, or manage our finances. Others, less conventionally, might generate a fake excuse, sing a sea shanty, or make your screen appear cracked. There is no such app, to my knowledge, as that The Shrouds‘ protagonist, Karsh, played by a handsomely aged Vincent Cassell (and who looks not a little like Cronenberg himself with a thick sheaf of white hair coiffed neatly backwards), has developed. His GraveTech app uses a modified high-tech shroud with dozens of hi-res cameras to broadcast a live, interactive 3D image of a deceased’s decomposing corpse. Karsh plans to be buried with his beloved Becca (Diane Kruger) when he dies, but GraveTech is already a hit with bereaved patrons: his company owns cemetery sites full of headstones with the technology embedded, operates a tony restaurant on each site, and plans further expansion in dozens of cities across the world.
While I can’t quite imagine the appeal of the app itself, in The Shrouds it’s one that works, and to be fair I have not endured, nor would I wish to endure, the grief of the kind of loss Karsh has experienced in losing his beloved Becca to cancer. It’s a loss Cronenberg himself has experienced, and spoken to directly in regards to describing the film as inspired by his own grief at the loss of his wife, Carolyn, in 2017. The Shrouds was originally conceived of and greenlit for a Netflix series before its cancellation and re-envisioning as a theatrical feature. To each his own when it comes to grief: Cronenberg makes a film in which his protagonist, standing in for the filmmaker himself, seeks to remain with her, always, as her body slowly composes.
Karsh’s grief is even more complicated by his relationship, so to speak, with Becca’s twin sister Terry (also played by Kruger), and the mysterious weirdo she is dating (a surprisingly slovenly Guy Pearce). Also worth mention is Karsh’s AI personal assistant, an animation he’s named “Hunny” who speaks with Becca’s voice, and a potential conspiracy that looms when vandals loot the graves his company owns, including Becca’s. Karsh must balance his grief for Becca with his growing lust for her doppelganger Terry and the mystery of the vandalization of the gravesites, all of which just may—or may not—be connected to the mysterious Soo-Win, with whom he has begun sharing his grief, his bed, and perhaps too many of his secrets.
The Shrouds balances some macabre humor and wit (think of puns on words like grave, encrypt, and plot) with a sleek visual style, with some nifty effects rendering the GraveTech and Hunny AI technologies. These and the thorny philosophical and ethical dilemmas the film raises though, are not nearly enough, nor is the director’s own profoundly felt grief, to make The Shrouds especially interesting as a film. Its neo-noir-adjacent narrative never grips nor absorbs; rather, it plods along as Karsh, confounded by his grief and enamored of his technologies, never seems to come to any kind of terms with his wife’s death nor satisfactorily resolves the presumedly pressing matter of the vandalization.
Some will certainly find Cronenberg’s exploration of grief through cinema enthralling, even enlightening, and I’ll confess that at least The Shrouds will move viewers to contemplate their own and their loved ones’ mortality. But if so, they’ll more likely be moved there by their boredom than by their enthrallment with its narrative momentum—or lack thereof.
Criterion Premieres packaging includes no information about the transfer other than its 1.85:1 aspect ratio and 5.1 surround sound audio, but on Blu-ray the image looks frankly spectacular in its detail. There is just one featurette, a 17-minute “Meet the Filmmakers” episode featuring Cronenberg reflecting on his career and the inception and production of The Shrouds. Subtitles for the Deaf and hard of hearing are available for the main feature but not, as continues to be the case for most of the company’s releases, English-language supplements. The standard single-disc jewel-case packaging includes a slim four-page color insert with some stills and a surprisingly pedestrian introductory essay, “The Shrouds: Undead.”
Cronenberg’s varied and heady career is otherwise well represented in The Criterion Collection with his classic films Scanners, The Brood, Videodrome, Dead Ringers, Crash, Naked Lunch, and now this month also A History of Violence. Whatever one thinks of his work, no one to my knowledge has ever called any of these boring; the Canadian auteur has always found ways to challenge and disorient his audiences. The Shrouds, with its body-horror grotesqueries and philosophical-ethical quandaries, might on the surface resemble some of Cronenberg’s best work, but in comparison it’s simply nowhere near as enthralling: shots from Scanners and Videodrome have lingered in my memory for decades, but I can’t imagine anything from The Shrouds living on too long once its final credits begin to roll.
