From a legendary filmmaker who has depicted flesh-guns emerging from television screens, sex as fatal car crash fetishism and spine implant-controlled virtual reality games, David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds sets a bizarre new bar for film in the age of artificial intelligence.
The film follows Karsh, played by Vincent Cassel, a businessman who monitors the decomposition of his wife’s corpse using a system called GraveTech. When the specialized tombstones in his company graveyard are hacked and ransacked by an unknown party, Karsh’s investigation uncovers an unseen international conspiracy.
The film appears as a naked, personal examination of Cronenberg’s grief following his wife’s death in 2017. In an interview with Variety, the director said her passing and his subsequent feelings were the “impetus” for The Shrouds’ creation, although the film is by no means strictly autobiographical.
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While other films grappling with grief relate a deceased person’s absence to its effects on family or friends, Cronenberg examines the longing for a dead loved one’s physical body — continuing the bodily preoccupation highly visible throughout his career.
Turbulent nightmares illustrate Karsh’s intense grief and yearning for his wife’s body. In one recurring dream sequence, he attempts to embrace his wife, then in the throes of cancer, when her hip shatters with a nauseating crack due to brittle bones. Through the tragedy of his wife’s deterioration and a slew of later sex scenes, Cronenberg illustrates his view of the intimacy of sex as a significant pillar in relationships.
The film also interrogates artificial intelligence and the constant presence of mobile phones in daily life. Karsh is aided in his graveyard hack investigation by Hunny, a computer-generated AI model that acts as his online secretary. But she’s suggested to be more than just an assistant.
Eventually, Karsh grows distrustful of Hunny, reflecting an apt suspicion of AI and possible harmful effects on its users.
Much of the film’s plot is conveyed through dialogue, alluding to some sort of enormous global scheme involving Russia, China and other countries to hack into GraveTech and use the system for mass surveillance. Details are deliberately vague, leading to confusion and a sense of being duped by the characters on screen.
Many of the aforementioned conversations are conducted through FaceTime, which sets The Shrouds apart at a time when filmmakers often shy away from featuring mobile phones in their works. Allowing static close-up shots of phone conversations to persist for minutes on end, Cronenberg fully commits to portraying the sterility and distance of a conversation through a screen.
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But the vagueness comes at a cost. Ultimately, the film’s ending ties up none of the loose ends and gives no resolution to the threat against GraveTech.
It’s a bummer to leave the theater empty-handed, but the questions asked by Cronenberg about the nature of death and our evolving technological world are enough to keep one pondering The Shrouds’ events for weeks to come.
