For many Cronenberg signifies body horror, a subgenre of horror of terrible things happening to the human body. I view Cronenberg’s personal horror films as merely “transitions of the human body.” To present and to investigate that the human body is perpetually changing, and evolving-never stagnated. But not just to show the horrors of the transitions of the human body but to also show that to fight the transitions is futile. Then to pepper in that being arrogantly stubborn to it as well leads to dire consequences. Here in “The Shrouds” Cronenberg is having a discussion on the ultimate transition of the human body,  death of course, but it’s a different approach. Here Cronenberg is investigating using grief as a vessel to question if anyone has a claim on the transition of the human body, even after death. Do you still claim it is your wife after her death? Do you have a claim to keep pieces of another person after they have been removed?  Do you own your own body after death?

“The Shrouds” stars Vincent Cassel as a man who through his grief created a tech that makes it able to monitor his wife in her grave to her completed decomposition. “I had a strong urge to join her in her grave” he confesses. In this “The Shrouds” is a cemetery, a tech concept and a political powder keg. All entwined in a twisted mystery after a video of someone, or a group send a video vandalizing the cemetery and cutting off all the access of monitoring.  Could this all lead to global espionage conspiracy? The viewers who are outside of the Cronenberg fan-base might put off from no real  coherent  conclusion, or not solving the mystery of sabotage and vandalism of The Shrouds, but solving the mystery is not really the key to the story. but another catalyst of removing the stubbornness of transitioning-to move on from the grief. To seek opportunities and other relationships. This film is clearly created by a filmmaker who has been making films for over fifty years, and feels deeply personal, more personal than anything he has done before and for good reason since he lost his wife in ‘2017.  Vincent Cassel in this his hair and outfits even seem like David Cronenberg himself. A noted feature that didn’t get past me.

Overall, Cronenberg is clever to use ambiguity of a mystery to keep the viewer focused on showing that grief can be a literal trap, a confinement. But also he shows that grief’s greatest trick is that it gives a false sense of moving on when you are still creating  newer things. Vincent Cassel’s character is open to adventure and creating new relationships, a healthy response to grief. His only flaw is that he still gives negative attention to the ghost of his wife that grief has manifested. He’s condemned to it- and we all know, in the Cronenberg realm fighting against that is pointless, which is very compelling if this film is any sort of,….. autobiographical. 8.3/10