INSPIRED BY THE DIRECTOR’S OWN EXPERIENCE OF GRIEF, DAVID CRONENBERG’S REVOLVES AROUND SOME VERY MORBID TECH

WORDS: IAN BERRIMAN

IF THERE’S ONE DIRECTOR WHO usually ducks biographical interpretations of their work, it’s David Cronenberg – for obvious reasons. No one’s likely to assume he has personal experience of, say, developing a bloodsucking organ in his armpit (Rabid), exploding heads with telekinetic powers (Scanners), or splicing his DNA with an insect (The Fly).

That said, the director’s personal life did factor into 1979’s The Brood, which saw Cronenberg drawing on an acrimonious custody battle for the tale of a man whose daughter is kidnapped by deformed children spawned spontaneously through his estranged wife’s rage. Now there’s a second Cronenberg film which will tempt future authors of monographs to take a biographical approach, because The Shrouds was sparked by the director going through the wringer with grief.

The high concept is… quite something. Vincent Cassel plays Karsh, developer of GraveTech – a system which, by wrapping a deceased person in a high-tech shroud, allows the bereaved to observe a 3D image of a loved one’s corpse as it decays, on a screen on their tombstone, or beamed to an app.

If you’re thinking, “WTF? Who’d pay for that?”, well… nowadays, who knows? “When I’ve been doing Q&As, I’ve been offering franchises to the audience,” Cronenberg tells SFX, with a wry smile. “You can start with one small grave in your backyard, to see how it feels, then expand. It could be my version of McDonald’s…”

The Shrouds had its origins in a series pitch for Netflix, at a point when Cronenberg had become fascinated by the streaming phenomenon. “It had always occurred to me that feature films were basically novellas, or even short stories, rather than novels,” he says, “Whereas a streaming series that was eight, 10 hours could really be the equivalent of a novel. I thought it would be interesting to see what I could do in that format.”