The Shrouds opens with a fascinating, disturbing, and old in Cronenberg’s twisted brain kind of way. What if you could bury your loved ones and use an app to monitor their decomposition? And what if the designer of such a system didn’t seem all that concerned over how creepy that is. And what if anti-tech-fascists (or someone) desecrated the cemetery…

I was very curious and fascinated by this big idea and where the mystery was taking me. It gets deep and thoughtful and could have turned out to be something really cool. Except it doesn’t seem to have any idea where its going. Its like a premise in search of a plot… that takes two hours to find an end.

It also had tin-eared dialog that constantly had me mentally rewriting the script. Sometimes it feels intentional… like a paranoid character is full of this misplaced, poppy dialog and maybe that’s intentional, I thought. Maybe he’s a representation of just being on the far side of normal so the bad dialog makes sense?

But then the two leads pepper their dialog with similar terrible lines. And then I’m wondering if it’s just a commentary about how people talk in heightened situations… and then I wonder if I’m just trying to wrestle Cronenberg into genius by pretending his poor dialog is brilliant?

But, then again, I also don’t know where the movie ultimately goes. It reaches a point and then just ends… pretty sure very few questions answered, subplots resolved. Our character just goes sailing off into the sunset leaving me pondering deeply Cronenberg’s name in the credits… as though he delivered a psychological masterpiece and now all I can do is stare into the blackness and ponder. Or, you know, get up and run to the bathroom because the movie was two hours long and I had made quick work of my soda an hour ago.

Yeah, I’m not sure about this film. But I admire its big, weird sci-fi ideas and wanted to go with it. Even if I was twinging at the dialog, I was still engaged with the premise for awhile. But it overstays its welcome and then just leaves. Maybe someone with a bigger brain can put it all together… but that’s not me on first go.

Score: 78