#TIFF24: “THE SHROUDS” REVIEW

By Nicholas Porteous

Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg’s daring and mysterious last work, established “surgery is the new sex”. His follow-up, The Shrouds, posits something along the lines of “death is the new exposition dump”. Vincent Cassel runs a cutting edge graveyard complete with 3D live feeds of all the lucky corpses. With that trademark grey coif, Cassel appears to be doubling for Cronenberg himself. They’re virtually indistinguishable when he’s wearing sunglasses. Cassel is also processing his wife’s passing (while maintaining an odd friendship with her identical sister), and  he’s obsessed with disintegrating bodies. When an unknown group attacks his cemetery, our lead is roped into a world of espionage, conspiracies, and counter-intelligence, unravelling everything he thought he knew about the nature of his business, and the love of his life. It sounds pretty fun, eh? The unfortunate thing about The Shrouds is it’s not nearly as cinematic as that summary might suggest.

Much of the runtime in this peculiar neo-noir involves following Cassel through conflicting dialogues. One character will provide a tip or speculation about the other, contradicted by the next, flipped again by the following. A framework of unreliable narrators and double crosses comes into focus. And I continue to make this all sound way more entertaining than it really is. Cronenberg has always had a knack for hilariously weird and engrossing dialogue, but in spite of a few chuckles and provocations here and there, this movie–which leans so heavily on its interchanges–has the least to offer out of his last few projects, the majority of which this particular critic has loved. There’s way too much explaining and expositing, not enough compelling characterization. The performances are uniformly detached to the point that there’s not much to distinguish the living from the dead. There’s a good chance that’s part of the point, but The Shrouds doesn’t do nearly enough to make me feel invested in deciphering that point. It’s physically and dramatically inert. Being such an obviously personal project, I would say this one’s for Cronenberg obsessives only. But even then, watch your step.

The Shrouds screens at TIFF ’24:

Wednesday, September 11th at 9:30 PM at Roy Thompson Hall

Thursday, September 12th at 2:30 PM at Royal Alexandra Theatre