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The audience is hungry for David CronenbergThe infamous brand of body horror may have hoped that 2022 Crimes of the future marked his return to the genre. This film, which formed an unofficial trilogy that ended in 1983 with Videodrome and was continued in 1999 existencecontained several throwbacks to the Canadian director's recurring visual and thematic interests.

The ShroudsCronenberg's latest film is even less a genre film than Crimes of the futureHowever, it features the same black humor as its predecessor and also shows the director's tendency to revisit or rethink his previous works.

The film is said to be set in 2023, four years after the death of Karsh (Vincent Cassel)'s wife Becca (Diane Kruger). Becca died of bone cancer and Karsh still hasn't recovered, as evidenced by the opening scene where he cries during a visit to the dentist.

The introductory scenes also illustrate the film's changing approach to reality. The Shrouds is firmly rooted in the real world, albeit one in which familiar technologies such as self-driving cars and AI avatars are somewhat more advanced. Cronenberg's staging, courtesy of the cinematographer Douglas Cookstill looks like our everyday world, but The Shrouds has a tendency for dreams to overlap with reality without any visual cues or transitions. Over time, these become easier to spot, but this practice undermines our trust in Karsh's experiences to the point that he is almost an unreliable protagonist.

In the years since Becca’s death, Karsh worked with his brother Maury (an old-fashioned, Guy Pearce) to build his “empire”: shrouds that wrap the dead before they are buried, as well as gravestones with a video screen and corresponding app that allows families to watch the decomposing bodies. This macabre sight can be disturbing, but is just as often used for black comedy. At the beginning of the film, Karsh tells of a blind date (Jennifer Dale) with explanations of his actions before showing her a live 4K video of his wife's decomposing corpse, in a scene that is equal parts grotesque and hilarious.

Cronenberg has publicly stated that the film is heavily autobiographical. In 2017, he lost his longtime wife of 38 years, and Cassel is a spitting image of the director – from the hairstyle and costume to the dry and slightly expressionless voice modulation. The Shrouds is clearly a personal exploration of the director's struggle with grief and loss, but even beyond its references to his life experience, the film feels like an imitation of Cronenberg's earlier work and interests.

It is primarily about the obsession with technology and the body, but also about conspiracies and industrial espionage. The ShroudsThe trigger is an act of vandalism at the Toronto site of Gravetech, Karsh's company. Eight gravestones were attacked overnight and the hackers disabled the video feeds, including Becca's.

Given the bureaucratic burden involved in an exhumation, Karsh decides to keep the incident secret, relying on the advice of his invaluable collaborator Gray Foner (Out of'S Elizabeth Saunders) and technical expertise from his brother. Karsh's investigation eventually uncovers connections to Iceland, China, and Russia – suggesting that the attack on the cemetery could have involved an Icelandic environmental protest group, Russian hackers, or Chinese surveillance (or all of the above).

In view of The Shrouds' tendency to confuse Karsh's dreams of his dead wife with real life, it quickly becomes unclear how much of what is happening is real or a conspiracy. Not helping matters is the fact that both Maury and Becca's twin sister Terry (also Kruger, wearing an unflattering wig) are conspiracy theorists. When Karsh notices unusual bone growths on several of the bodies attacked by the vandals, there are even suspicions of medical experimentation. This is exacerbated when it turns out that Becca's doctor – and ex-boyfriend – Dr. Jerry Ekler (Steve Switzman) has disappeared… on a trip to Iceland.

The interwoven elements of the conspiracy are reminiscent of the penchant for industrial espionage and terrorism in Videodrome, existence, Crimes of the future and other Cronenberg texts like Naked lunch. Unfortunately, the writer/director is hesitant to fully engage with these ideas: sometimes the conspiracy elements seem to be there only to confuse or complicate the narrative, taking the narrative in circles rather than exploring new territory, and the film's abrupt ending will inevitably frustrate or disappoint audiences seeking closure.

There's some interesting commentary about how, while certain types of men don't always understand the world, they can – and will – benefit from it. Take, for example, the tensions surrounding the foreign threats posed by China and Russia, and Karsh's slightly fetishistic appropriation of Japanese culture in his recently renovated apartment. Both come across as Cronenberg's sly and wry observations about how straight men of a certain age navigate today's world. And to add fuel to the fire, Karsh owns a self-driving Tesla and relies on a Facebook meta-like AI avatar named Hunny (Kruger in her third role), who is both an assistant, a search engine, and an ego-stroking flirt.

These elements also play a role in the mixing of death and sex in the film. The Shrouds begins with Karsh's unsuccessful attempt to get back into the dating world after four years of abstinence. In the middle of the film, he is not only courting Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt), the blind wife of a dying rich client, but also his (ex-)sister-in-law, the almost identical doppelganger of the woman whose death set his entire capitalist venture in motion.

In a lengthy sequence, when Karsh and Terry finally go to bed, she questions him mid-coitus about her and her sister's bodies, comparing their anatomical parts and what her twin sister thinks of her. It's almost identical to the interrogation between Catherine and James in 1999's The Last Man. crash: an invocation of the dead or absent to spice up the connection, yes, but also a testimony to how the dead live on in everyday activities, regardless of the state of their physical decomposition.

These nuggets make for a film that is more interesting than entertaining. The Shrouds feels strangely listless and uneven. This is illustrated by Cassel's performance: although he is a solid replacement for the director, much of his dialogue seems leaden and repetitive, which Is in keeping with many of Cronenberg's films. The author tends to keep his audience at an (emotional) distance, hence the terms “cold” or “clinical” often used to describe his work. This is true here, especially when the film engages in a philosophical discourse on life, death and decay.

Nevertheless, the film fits well with many of Cronenberg’s works. Even if The Shrouds takes the Canadian director a step away from body horror, but he clearly uses the same visual and thematic source as many of his earlier films and the black humour works extremely well. Overall, The Shrouds is a safe choice for Cronenberg fans.

The Shrouds had its North American premiere at TIFF 2024.