The year’s most wretched horror film will have you gasping over corpses and nipples-Tori Brazier-Entertainment – Metro

This year’s Cannes Film Festival has brought more than its fair share of shocking and controversial movies and moments, from Francis Ford Coppola’s comeback Megalopolis to the ‘sickening’ Kinds of Kindness from Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Emma Stone.

We’ve seen erections, plenty of chopped off fingers, a hint of cannibalism and more than one gang bang.

However, the horror genre appears to be having a particular, gore-filled moment thanks in part to The Substance and its naked leading lady, Demi Moore, who also engages in an especially gruesome fight scene with her co-star Margaret Qualley.

But now one of the body horror genre originators David Cronenberg (a.k.a. the Baron of Blood) has debuted his latest film, The Shrouds, at the prestigious festival, serving up a big slice of mutilation, nudity and corpses alongside a searing study on grief.

And also a barrel full of laughs for the slightly scandalised audience, courtesy of some very dark humour.

First reactions to it include praise for The Shrouds’ ‘dazzling ambition and deep emotion brimming six feet under’, with others simply saying it ‘rocks’ and calling it ‘brilliant’.

Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger take the lead roles in David Cronenberg’s grisly new death-obsessed horror film, The Shrouds (Picture: Gravetech Productions/SBS Production)

Meanwhile other reviews have accused it of ‘verging on self-parody’ (Variety) and ‘lifeless’ (Vulture).

Starring Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger and Guy Pearce, the film follows 50-year-old widower Karsh (Cassel), who is inconsolable after the death of his wife Becca (Kruger) and decides to invent GraveTech, a revolutionary and controversial technology to help him stay feeling close to his spouse’s body.

You know it’s going to be a weird one when the film’s opening minutes show Karsh having a nightmare about his wife while at the dentist, only for the dentist to try and console him with the offer of JPEGs of her old dental records.

It soon makes sense though, when you find out the details of what he has invented, which is just one of many disturbing parts of the film.

The Shrouds showcases corpses regularly at every stage of decay

The Shrouds is about a new way of monitoring your dearly departed’s body while it’s decaying in the grave (Picture: Gravetech Productions/SBS Production)

The Shrouds will test you with its complex, intellectual examination of how people mourn and cope with the loss of their loved ones – in this case, they opt to create interactive camera shrouds that wrap around bodies and allow for monitoring.

Friends and relatives can visit the interlinked cemetery to watch the body live on each grave’s screen, using the app (‘encrypted’ of course, said with an acknowledgement of the pun) to navigate and zoom in on certain parts of their dead one’s rotting flesh, if they so wish.

Karsh introduces the audience to all of this during a blind date at the gourmet restaurant in the cemetery he also owns, which finishes with an offer from him to take his date to see his wife’s dead body.

Diane Kruger got to see what she looked like ‘in death’

Troy actress Kruger plays three roles, one being Karsh’s (Cassel) dead wife Becca, who appears as a mutilated dead body or in corpse form (Picture: Getty)

As Becca – one of her three parts – Kruger spends a large amount of her time essentially playing a rotting body.

The film’s CGI has reduced Kruger’s character’s body to mostly bone and some flesh at this stage, which is approximately four years after her death.

Discussing her reaction to the gory sight of herself decomposing, Kruger joked at the film’s press conference on Tuesday to Metro.co.uk and other press: ‘I thought it looked pretty good death.’

She later explained that when she first watched the film, she found it ‘more fascinating than repulsive’, seeing her own corpse.

The Troy and National Treasure star, 47, admitted she would have ‘been completely frazzled on set’ if the movie had come her way 10 years ago, but instead felt she ‘thrived’ thanks to Cronenberg’s trust and love, which she called ‘incredibly moving’.

The Fly’s director Cronenberg also revealed that he makes a cameo in the film too as a body being removed from a grave, after borrowing a fake corpse made of himself for the Canadian TV series Slasher a few years ago.

‘So I’ve had the experience, and I honestly do not look as good as Diane,’ the 81-year-old filmmaker laughed.

The Shrouds features a large amount of nudity and nipples

The film’s obsession with the body leads to a heck of a lot of nudity for its actors (Picture: Gravetech Productions/SBS Production)

Cronenberg features a lot of nudity for Kruger, as well as Cassel as Karsh and cast member Sandrine Holt.

But Kruger is the one who is always entirely naked as Becca. In her non-corpse version, she is still a mutilated body missing an arm and a breast on her left side, the wounds sewn up with primitive-looking stitches.

But even in her role as Becca’s sister Terry, we see her fully naked in a graphic, groaning sex scene after she admits that the conspiracy theories at the heart of the film, following an attack on the cemetery, turn her on.

And in her third role, that of Kash’s AI assistant Hunny, Kruger still has a moment where she appears naked onscreen.

‘I’ve never done anything like this. I’ve never done this much nudity on screen, so I felt very vulnerable all the time,’ Kruger shared, before praising Cassel’s support.

‘I publicly want to call out my co-star here for being so kind to me. And having – literally – my back. And my front and centre!’

The biggest gasp-worthy scene that will really set your teeth on edge

Among its darkly humorous and regularly gross moments, there is one especially shocking scene (Picture: Gravetech Productions/SBS Production)

The Shrouds is a film full of winces and laughs and glances away as a viewer if you are squeamish over its premise.

However, one scene that literally drew gasps of horror saw Karsh’s worst worry come true, poaisoning a sweet moment.

Karsh dreams and has flashbacks of his wife throughout the film, and in one she comes to him in bed and they have sex, with her asking him to hold her despite the brittleness of her bones after chemotherapy.

As Karsh then moves to lie behind her on the bed, holding her, we hear a big crack – it goes right through you – and Becca cries out in pain, revealing her hip is broken. Shudder.

The devastating real-life inspiration behind The Shrouds

Director David Cronenberg has been open about his inspiration for The Shrouds (Picture Getty)

Filmmaker Cronenberg spoke in detail about The Shrouds and it being his ‘most autobiographical film’.

He took time off from his career following his wife Carolyn’s illness and then death in 2017, before deciding to imbue this film with his own personal struggle with grief and trying to find ‘meaning’ in her death as an atheist.

‘In this movie, I was discussing, in a way, the death of my wife, who I had been with for 43 years. I stopped filmmaking for quite a while – five or six years – and then I felt the impulse to tell a story about that,’ he shared.

The filmmaker with his late wife Carolyn at Cannes Film Festival in 2005 (Picture: George Pimentel/WireImage)

‘Not exactly realistic, not really autobiography, but somehow blending my experience of her death and my loss with some other considerations.’

A visceral film about both the physical and emotional loss suffered in death already packs a powerful punch, but with Cronenberg’s added context it takes on a new level of meaning.

The Shrouds premiered at Cannes Film Festival on May 20. A UK release date is yet to be announced.

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