Despite being in his eighties, David Cronenberg doesn’t appear to have settled down yet to make family-friendly films. His last film, Crimes of the Future (2022) caused the entire audience to leave my local cinema until I was the only person left in the theatre. I therefore wasn’t expecting an easy ride when embarking on The Shouds, his new venture, knowing it revolves around technology which allows people to watch their loved ones’ bodies decay in their grave. A nice and cheerful film to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon, right?

Anyone who has ever seen a Cronenberg film knows that he doesn’t shy away from dark subjects. Exploding heads, scary technology, paranoia-inducing conspiracies: these films are not for the fainthearted. I don’t blame anyone for disliking his work and I certainly wouldn’t recommend The Shrouds to anyone if I didn’t know them well enough to assess whether they would appreciate it. Especially if you’re currently dealing with grief, watching decomposing bodies probably isn’t a great way to spend your time.

Having said that, Cronenberg made this film after his wife passed away. While he has said in interviews that the film isn’t autobiographical, it is clearly inspired by his own feelings of grief. For me this aspect of the film was the most thoughtprovoking. Businessman Karsh, who is busy building an empire of technologically advanced graveyards, is driven by his inability to accept his wife Becca’s death from cancer. He finds comfort in using his own invention to watch her corpse decay in her grave but is also haunted by nightmares in which she, mutilated by a disease eating away at her body, appears in his bedroom.

To the distant observer this may sound quite morbid. But it also made me think about how sanitized death has become in Western culture. Most of us rarely see a dead body and death tends to be confined to soulless crematoriums, far away from public life. Unlike birth, now a billion-dollar industry of gender reveal parties and baby showers, death is a part of life we’d rather not think about, let alone celebrate. I’m not saying we should keep our nana’s mummified corpse in the spare room and bring her out for birthday parties, far from it. But how many of us feel empowered to openly discuss our grief? It’s an emotion society encourages us to repress. American mortician Caitlin Doughty has been campaigning for more open attitudes towards death, producing some great books and documentaries in the process. Youtube frequently demonitizes her videos due to “inappropriate subject matter”, by the way. A clear sign that death is apparently a more controversial topic than war, misogyny, or hate speech.

The Shrouds also shows cancer in a way that’s not hopeful, loving, or pink. It doesn’t make for easy viewing, but I found it refreshing to see a depiction of cancer that shows it as the devastating illness that it is. I recently watched an interview with a woman who had been asked not to swim without a bikini top in her local swimming pool. She had previously asked for, and been granted, permission to do so because wearing one made the scars on her chest hurt. She was asked to cover up because another swimmer found it “uncomfortable” to see her scars. Apparently some people will happily donate to Pink Ribbon but can’t bear to see the body of someone actually living with cancer. Once again, the painful and scary reality of illness and death is seen as too confrontational, too hard to process.

Personally, I found these elements of The Shrouds far more interesting than the rather messy conspiracy plot. But as with most Cronenberg films, the plot is merely there to keep the film going, and not really what the story is about. The plot is an excuse to build a strange world not unlike our own where a dreamlike logic reigns. A world where topics taboo in our own world can be explored in often graphic detail.

Maybe The Shrouds is not Cronenberg’s best film, at least not at superficial level. It definitely has some flaws. But almost a week after I’ve seen it, I still find myself unpacking its layers of meaning. This is not a great film to pick if you’re just after a relaxing movie to while away a Friday night. But it’s certainly worth a watch if you’re prepared to put some work in and really think about the subjects it touches upon. I haven’t even got round yet to considering the film’s depiction of technology, its impact on our humanity, and how its premise sits within Cronenberg’s wider oeuvre. For now, I’m just relieved that weird and difficult films can still be made in a media landscape that seems ever more geared towards bland corporate tat. For that reason alone, I’ll be keen to see what Cronenberg comes up with next.

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