The Shrouds is the kind of movie that people use to prove that critics are out of touch. The dialogue is atrocious, the plot is inscrutable, and if this was from any director except Cronenberg it would be derided as vapid trash. It is only April and I can say with confidence that this is the worst movie I will see this year.

That was the weirdest Tesla commercial I have ever seen

There are movies that have ambiguous & abrupt endings, done for effect (Blade Runner) and then there are movies that stop 2/3rds of the way through the conventional three-act structure, and it's jarring in a bad way. This film is in the second group, unfortunately. In an era where many stories that could have been a movie are being stretched into a mini-series, often unnecessarily, this story could have worked better as a mini-series (and may have attracted more eyeballs to it). Even so, the soundtrack, acting, costumes & cinematography are all excellent, and you should watch it at least once. It's one of Cronenberg's least gory & unsettling movies. EDIT: So it turns out that this is indeed adapted from a mini-series pitch. Maybe the idea was to have a Shrouds Pt 2, Cronenberg's first sequel?

I’m a big Cronenberg guy, and I still couldn’t believe how bad The Shrouds is. His dialogue is always stiff and clinical, but usually it’s intentional — a way of showing characters who are emotionally detached or alienated from their own bodies. Here, the characters are trying to connect, trying to share grief and trauma, and they still talk like malfunctioning AIs. Entire scenes play out as people dumping exposition at each other in shot-reverse-shot. Half the movie takes place on tablets. It honestly feels less like Cronenbergian coldness and more like watching a radio drama where the actors wandered onto a set by accident. Visually, there’s nothing going on. No tension, no buildup, no sense of environment. Just flat rooms and people talking. Even the body-horror ideas — his wife’s mutilation, the bone growths, the “hip break” scene — feel disconnected from the film around them. And the AI character Honey? Absolute disaster. A Dora-the-Explorer cartoon who turns into a koala and later a naked cartoon version of his dead wife. It’s one of the lamest, most baffling images Cronenberg has ever put on screen. Add in Vincent Cassel giving one of the flattest performances of his career and an elderly sex scene that goes on forever, and the whole thing becomes unintentionally comedic. And then there’s the story, which never actually starts. The “mystery” has no stakes, the twist is a shrug, and the movie just… ends. Cassel gets on a plane, hallucinates for five seconds, and credits roll. No climax, no resolution, nothing tying the themes together. I stuck with it because I’ve loved Cronenberg for decades, but this is the first time one of his films felt like a draft. I’m sympathetic to the grief behind it — his wife died, and this is clearly personal — but none of that emotion is on screen. It’s sterile in all the wrong ways, more lifeless than any of his hospital operating rooms. Easily his weakest film, and a rare Cronenberg I’d tell people to skip.

This is not _just_ a dumb movie. When you factor in the talent and budget involved it is easily the _dumbest movie this year, possibly this entire decade!_ (keeping in mind that I have not seen "Megalopolis" yet...) Was this just created to be a Tesla ad or what? Those ad spots were super cringe.