Film Butch Rant: The Shrouds

4/27/2025

Spoilers for The Shrouds, obviously.

First off, I should just note that I always feel weird giving critiques about movies – who am I to say whether something is good and bad? I couldn’t do any of that shit, so what can I say that will matter? But I also have to say, after seeing The Shrouds today, I stepped out of the theater with a lot of thoughts, and I just want to get them down.

Through the week, I had been trying to decide which movie to see: The Legend of Ochi or The Shrouds, as they were the two playing at my go-to theater. Ochi I had been interested to see because of the puppetry and visual effects, but also had been a bit turned off when I saw the trailer. It gave me a very strong flashback to 2012 and my obsession with Woodkid – my life was a quirky whimsical adventure if I wanted it to be! The (very white/european indie kitsch) aesthetic and the soundtrack used in the trailer (oh my GOD the soundtrack – bring me back to 2014!) made me feel like I have outgrown it, that the plot would bore me and feel too cliché (of course it seems like the common plot for a kid’s fantasy adventure movie, which I am just tired of, no shade towards it). The trailer for The Shrouds didn’t tell me much, but it just seemed like it would be a strange (I’m no stranger to weird and “shocking” movies so that’s not what I mean, just something off about it) and a little boring – it didn’t tell me much, and I had been hopeful that the trailer just wasn’t doing it justice, because I have been a fan of Cronenberg in the past: Videodrome was alright (some parts of it rubbed me the wrong way, but it was cool), I really enjoyed Scanners (especially the face-off at the end), The Brood was probably the first film of his I saw, and I loved it so much – love those weird little guys. My mom continues to always talk very strongly of The Fly – she HATES horror, and was tricked into watching it when it came out so she has strong opinions.

In the end, I was easily persuaded to go with The Shrouds by one of the cute people working at the theater – “I mean you can’t go wrong with Cronenberg!” I do not blame them for this, they hadn’t seen it yet.

Basically, The Shrouds is about Karsh, a man who lost his wife Becca to cancer 4 years before the film. He created Grave Tech, burial shrouds that allow loved ones of the deceased to see a live feed of what the body looks like in burial – they are able to watch the body as it decomposes in the grave. After that is all introduced, the film goes off the rails, and I have no idea how to summarize what happens.

Blah blah blah dead wife blah blah blah

The most glaring thing that I had (1) initially been wary of, and (2) immediately got annoyed by, was the use of the dead wife trope: this beautiful, perfect woman who we know nothing about tragically died too young before the beginning of the film, and our protagonist is completely destroyed and consumed by his grief, making it the central plot device of the story. Coincidentally, I search the “dead wife trope” while writing this, and several articles from this year are popping up that state there has been a resurgence in the trope. Goody.

Something that just came to mind: isn’t it usually that women outlive their husbands? Maybe that’s why the trope is such a big deal, men just assume/expect that their wives will outlive them and they’ll never have to grieve. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a movie that gives a dead husband the same treatment. Seriously – if you guys can think of one that does, please let me know – I’d love to compare it to the dead wives.

Naturally, Cronenberg did put his own spin on this to a degree, instead of flashbacks we see images of her as she was towards the end – amputations, surgical scarring and staples, and brittle bones that break the second he tries to touch her. But in doing so, we also did not know her character aside from what her illness and death did to him: towards the end, they couldn’t have sex, he struggles to date several years after her death, and seemingly only does so for the sake of having sex. Which if he just wants someone to get his rocks off with that’s fine, but like… don’t take a blind first date to the restaurant you own in your weird robotic cemetery in which you watch a live feed of your wife’s decomposing body right outside the door? And certainly don’t go out of your way to tell her that! (I will note, that woman she went on the date with was fully just a means of providing exposition. No other blind dates occur, we never see her again, and I cannot remember a damn thing about her.)

As is the case with a lot of movies I watch, I end up feeling uncertain about the depiction of women, and this was no exception. A big part of that is because I can’t always determine how the artist felt when creating the media – is this intended to be some sort of commentary about how men treat women, or is it just an example of a man poorly treatment women in the art he creates? Why are these women obsessed with this man, who to me seems like a total loser? Why are they practically begging him to have sex with them, one even being his own sister-in-law? At the beginning of the film, Karsh mentions Terry having the “same body” as her sister (ew), and that his wife had specifically told him not to get with her sister after she died, but of course he has no hesitation fucking her the second she confesses she’s into him (probably just because she looks exactly like his late wife, played by the same actress too). Soo-Min is introduced when her husband is seeking to fund the Budapest expansion of Grave Tech, knowing he will be dying soon and would like to be buried in a shroud, even though his wife is blind and won’t be able to see the feed. Shortly after she meets Karsh, her husband is on his deathbed, and she has no problem meeting up with Karsh in a hotel room and seducing him before her husband has even passed – which I would have probably been okay with them including if her reasoning and motivations had been explored, but there was nothing: one second she’s a loving wife, as far as I can tell, the next she’s completely neglecting her dying husband to fuck a weird old dude who is obsessed with watching his dying wife’s body decay. Soo-Min is seen by Karsh’s side for the rest of the film, no mention of her husband after they start hooking up.

Is this intended to be some sort of commentary, because I don’t see that being the case. I remember having a similar feeling when watching Videodrome, that being the main reason I said it had rubbed me the wrong way. But also, even if they were intended to subvert, if it isn’t overt enough, the people who need to hear the message will not receive it, y’know? So it doesn’t do much in effect of getting a point across or changing anyone’s mind, and in that case I’d rather not see women being sexually exploited for seemingly no narrative reason.

I will also say, that going into the film, I had known that the film was based on Cronenberg’s own experience of losing his wife to cancer. I would say that is one of the most resonant aspects of the film, and seemingly under-utilized. The entire premise, technology that allows you to watch loved ones decompose, inspired by Karsh’s strong desires to crawl into the casket with his wife, can be really powerful. However, I think the direction the plot took did a huge disservice to the initial concept and theme of the film. At the beginning, when introducing the concept of the shrouds, Karsh describes the Jewish burial tradition, and how bodies must be buried so that the soul has time to stay with the body before moving on to heaven. They show Becca’s body with an insect (a moth, I think?) flapping right over her head, I’m assuming to represent her soul – but then they didn’t do anything else with that? I would have loved to explore the implications and impacts of the technology more: what is it like for someone who is new to the grieving process, to watch their loved one’s body decay and become something unrecognizable? How do Grave Tech clients feel about the service, how do they use the technology? Is it actually beneficial, or just making their grief worse? Once the idea is initally introduced, it feels largely ignored and obfuscated by strange conspiracy theories and mysteries that aren’t even explored, just sort of mentioned and left up in the air.

The left turn into Conspiracyville

The film attempts to discuss the shroud technology in a way that references how it could be abused and used for evil – not a new theme for Cronenberg to tackle. In the trailer, one character says to Karsh, “if these shrouds can be weaponized, people will find a way to do it.” I had been curious to see where that would go, what he could come up with on how that sort of technology could be utilized. However, from what I could tell, that idea didn’t really go anywhere aside from Russia and China using it for surveillance. So… someone uses an app to hack into your phone… or… they keep track of where your loved one’s body is…? At one point in the film, they even mention that people can be tracked from any large network like that, asking why Grave Tech is so special. The film has self-driving Teslas, apps and encrypted data being hacked, a “fake” AI assistant used for surveillance, an app to control video feeds and views of the bodies, deconstructions and renderings of strange growths found on the bodies that are also apparently weird layered fake growths that were implanted and made of some weird blue material? And it seems like most of this is either (1) included because it’s a relevant discussion, like AI and fake images, or (2) a strange attempt at portraying an understanding of how modern technology works that just comes off as very outdated and tone-deaf, especially when a lot of the ideas and conversations introduced by the plot devices are not actually resolved. It feels confused.

Another factor that contributes to this lack of uncertainty and confusion is the use of conspiracy theories and speculation as a large part of the plot. At the beginning of the film, Terry, Becca’s sister, tells Karsh that she thinks her sister was purposefully experimented on and that they did not give her the best possible care, instead using her as a guinea pig – fair enough. However, everything introduced in the film is left up in the air, attributed to a grand conspiracy. Terry’s ex-husband Maury is framed as being psychotic, raving to Karsh about how he was behind it all, and about how he was now being targeted by the Chinese government, who is already investing in and using Grave Tech to get surveillance across the West, and how he hired Russian hackers and now they think he’s working with Russia, blah blah blah. If it was made clear that this was all false and that he was just completely delusional, I think it would’ve been fine, and mostly just a useless plot point. However, it is completely left up in the air who is right. No questions are answered – which in a lot of films, leaving some things unanswered at the end really works – but in this case it felt unfinished and useless. Why include all this anti-China and anti-Russia rambling if it doesn’t make a larger point? It gave me a similar feeling to the deluge of anti-Middle East films that came out following 9/11. There is nothing done to make it clear that these conspiracies are stupid and completely illogical: Terry and Karsh at one point do try to blow off Maury’s ranting and raving, but everyone else in the film dispels identical theories, not much is done to distinguish Maury from everyone else, aside from the characters saying he’s crazy.

Was the Chinese government and Dr. Zhao actually involved in the Chinese tech company that helped Karsh create the shrouds? Who actually vandalized the cemetery and hacked the feeds? What are those growths that appeared on the bodies, was it actually caused by Dr. Eckler’s treachery or was he just a weird creep? Was Maury actually involved, or was he just being a weirdo using Honey to track Karsh’s relationship with Terry? Like… I don’t care… and it didn’t feel like the film did either. Writing out the number of things going on in the film feels insane – and at the same time with so much happening, the film was also so boring?