If you’ve seen Naked Lunch, Crash, eXistenZ and Videodrome, you’ll known Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg is someone who gets audiences’ eyebrows raising.  A quick artificial intelligence search on the internet comes back with the following adjectives to describe his works – visceral, unsettling, disturbing, erotic, and psychological.  They’re all accurate and appropriate.

The Shrouds is his latest film and it’s based on a messed-up premise.  A savvy entrepreneur, Karsh (Cassel), has developed a unique business – a cemetery where cameras are placed inside buried coffins.  Loved ones can tap into the surveillance on their phones and watch the bodies decompose over time.  It’s a warped way to “stay in touch” with a deceased family member and Karsh crafted the idea when his wife passed away four years ago.  He’s now looking to roll out the niche idea out across the globe.

As you might expect, not everyone is a fan, and his cemetery is desecrated by vandals one evening who smash tombstones and uproot technology.  To make matters worse, they’ve hacked the cameras and locked clients out.  Are they after ransom money?  Is it intended to be a protest?  Do they perversely want to look at the dead bodies themselves?  Karsh doesn’t want to engage the local police and so he enlists his tech-savvy brother-in-law, Maury (Pearce), to obtain answers.  As this transpires, Karsh experiences a series of hallucinations involving his late wife which results in even more questions.  Weird and perverse enough for you?

I like the concept more than the narrative.  This idea of voyeuristic, 21^st Century cemeteries is thought-provoking and will generate a range of views depending on your personal perspectives and ideologies.  Could something like this be constructed today?  The film’s whodunit elements are less compelling.  Cronenberg throws in red herrings (that’s a plus) but when it’s all wrapped up and the closing credits roll, I wasn’t fully satisfied by Karsh’s character arc and the mystery’s resolution.

It has taken over a year for The Shrouds to reach Australian cinemas after it premiered in competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.  It’s interesting but not fully satisfying.