To its credit, “The Shrouds” begins by taking a bold swing. It decides to use its best scene right away.
After the ominous and ethereal opening credits, director David Cronenberg presents an image of a rotting female corpse, presumably in its grave. As the camera slowly pushes in, it becomes clear the corpse is being watched intently by a man through a window. A light turns on from the other side, and the man screams.
This man is Karsh, an eclectic businessman who’s decided to invest in a strange new enterprise after losing his wife. The enterprise in question is GraveTech, a screen system that allows the bereaved to view the decay of their loved ones in real time. One night, however, this unique cemetery is mysteriously desecrated, and he begins an investigation to find the culprit.
The minute I read this premise, I was in. The film sounded like an interesting meditation on grief through the lens of horror and science fiction, two of my favorite film genres. Unfortunately, “The Shrouds” is largely a letdown.
This was a very personal project for Cronenberg. Having lost his wife, the film undoubtedly served as an autobiography of sorts, and you can feel his passion through the screen. Still, you get the sense he made it more for himself than his audience.
After the eerie opening scene, the film falls into a disappointing rhythm. Virtually every scene from then on consists of banal conversations as Karsh meets with various people to solve the mystery, and with every new interaction, I felt myself slipping further and further into boredom. At several points, I was even on the verge of sleep.
I wouldn’t have a problem with the movie relying on dialogue if the dialogue in question was interesting. Unfortunately, practically every line in “The Shrouds” consists of on-the-nose exposition, stilted attempts at pushing the plot forward, or both. Some conversations even seemed to consist solely of a question-and-answer structure.
Still, there are moments of beauty. The best scenes are those in which the characters stop talking and allow Howard Shore’s score to do the heavy lifting. These moments always made me wake up and pay attention.
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I also found the tone to be very confused. The first scene primed my brain to expect a horror film, but most of the runtime is dedicated to Karsh going through typical investigative beats as he tries to locate the perpetrators. Some moments also seemed to be aiming for black comedy, and although I chuckled a few times, it made me wonder how much of it was supposed to be funny.
The film’s biggest sin, however, lies in its third act. Karsh’s investigation reached a point where, apparently, plot twists were in order, and so a series of shake-ups occurred, reestablishing how we looked at the crime no less than three times in three consecutive scenes. It got to the point where I was struggling to follow along.
With its incoherent twists, “The Shrouds” shows its hand — it seems Cronenberg made it up as he went along.
“The Shrouds” contains more than a few moments of greatness, but it largely wastes its killer premise with tedious dialogue and sloppy narrative choices that muddle any message it might have been trying to send about grief, love, and over-reliance on technology. I don’t think I can recommend it.