The Shrouds

If you ask most people what makes a David Cronenberg movie, they’ll inevitably use the phrase “body horror”. It’s not unreasonable: his breakthrough came when he codified the genre in the 80s with Scanners and Videodrome, softening the ground for The Fly to become his biggest box office success in 1986. The connection between his name and that subgenre was further solidified for the younger generations when an early Rick & Morty episode dubbed grotesque, sentient mounds of deformed human flesh “Cronenbergs”. And whenever any modern director makes a body horror film, they’re immediately compared to the man. It was Coralie Fargeat for The Substance last year, Julia Ducournau for Titane before that, and obviously, but appropriately, all three features from his son, Brandon.

But there’s a reason the elder Cronenberg has long been uncomfortable with the body horror label. For him, the human body in all its forms is beautiful. It exists to be admired, to be held, to be touched. As the earthly container for our consciousness, the bodies of others are crucial to our sense of who they are. Changes to their bodies do not in the least bit diminish their value as human beings, but can certainly alter our relationship to them. Such changes can come from all directions, but he’s often chosen to focus on those precipitated by technology. This humanistic fascination has been on full display since the turn of the century, as he’s elected to stare into the souls of his characters instead of actualizing their maladies, with the exception of 2022’s Crimes of the Future.

Read my full review over on Pop Culture Maniacs.