The Shrouds 2024 WEB.H264 Download via Torrent
Written by: Demo Account
33/49
Diane Kruger replaces Léa Seydoux in the role
Scenario
Karsh, an innovative entrepreneur and grieving widower, builds a device that allows him to communicate with the dead in a burial shroud. Movie Spam podcast link: Episode 961: In a Violent Nature + TIFF 2024 (2024). Compared to the very average Future Crimes, Cronenberg’s previous work and return to the body horror subgenre that made him famous, Shroud; is returning to making something… acceptable even the right word? But as with its predecessor, almost every Shroud installment will likely bring to mind another similar Cronenberg film that arguably fared better. In particular, the magnificent Crash may come to mind, which explored similar themes of macabre voyeurism and sexual fascination with death, physical corruption, and wounds in a much more haunting way.
Not that you’ll expect any, anyway
It’s a curse of older, more experienced filmmakers that their latest work is constantly compared to their previous masterpieces, but that’s also inevitable when said filmmakers are clearly out of new ideas. This is a much more complex story than Future Crimes, which literally goes nowhere, nothing major, just an episode that needs to relate more to the main theme. But following our rather bland protagonist through an investigation that grows tiresome by the minute is still a challenge. I encourage you to be extra careful about any answers to the Skrouds’ many mysteries. The psychology of our protagonist is important, as is evident in the opening scene (and perhaps the last, which made some of the audience laugh at the rather spectacular ending of the story halfway through the film).
Perhaps worse, his supposed admiration never feels real, authentic, or overwhelming
nowhere). These two scenes help to convey the idea that the whole story is really about working through the grief of a loved one, which makes sense since Cronenberg had dreams about his wife dying. But again, the whole thing feels like a late-breaking variation (if not an actual rehash) of what Cronenberg has already done and said, rather than a new, belated approach to the same issues. What bothers me most is that the protagonist never feels like he is, deep down, really bothered by what is happening to him; Vincent Cassel, who is on par with James Woods or James Spader, is quite good as a cool, cool tech entrepreneur with a penchant for minimalism and cryptonecrophilia, but when it comes to expressing any kind of compulsion and fascination, it simply isn’t enough to sustain the film. No descent into the shadows for our hero, no journey through the uncharted, rough swamps of his soul—or of modern society.
There is nothing here that is interesting premise that is never explored
And that’s what disappoints me most about “Shrouds.” The other pole of the director’s work—technology—is never really addressed. His best horrors are about the collective unconscious and how we humans relate to technology. How there is no real opposition between the organic and the machine, but a true symbiosis. How we are defined by our instincts and unconscious desires to reappropriate, connect, and do unspeakable things with our gadgets. With cell phones, autonomous Teslas, and personal AI, it is like checking off empty boxes.
It is a shame that “Shroud” prefers to stay afloat rather than dig up the corpses that haunt our fantasies
The AI assistant part of the plot, like so much else, needed some fleshing out, though I understand that behind our mechs and supposedly autonomous technology is us and our unspoken, shameful longings.