Metacritic reviews

Sardonic, unsentimental, and often so cadaverously stiff that the film itself appears to be suffering from rigor mortis, as if its images died at some point along their brief journey from the projector to the screen.

The Shrouds is sober, serious and profoundly sad Cronenberg. It’s still a hell of a ride, but it’s going down a road where there’s a heavy toll.

It lacks the electricity of his past works but, as we come to see, the lifelessness of it all, is, in many regards, the point of the whole thing. It's about carrying on when nothing makes sense.

It’s a movie presented with absolute conviction and gimlet-eyed seriousness, but less wayward humour than Cronenberg often gives us.

As a storyteller Cronenberg usually tells stories with more verve and storytelling power than this.

Cronenberg is transmitting to us from the borders of death, behind the enemy lines of inconsolable grief. And the man’s mind is still so alive that it seems churlish to ding this movie for being so — God, this isn’t the word I want to use, but I must — lifeless. Sadly, the inertia eventually gets to us.

This fetid stew of sex, death and tech may be an aphrodisiac for hardcore Cronenberg fans, but more casual viewers are likely to find it all rather slapdash and undercooked here.

As The Shrouds goes on, it becomes more earnest and more nutty. I think Cronenberg thinks he’s making movies that audiences will experience as feature-length versions of his own dreams. Here’s the difference: When you’re in a dream, you believe what’s happening.

The Shrouds has potential to be morbidly hilarious, deeply twisted and strange, or rather moving: the fact that it only feints in those directions, while prioritising several less fruitful ones, makes it the steepest disappointment of Cronenberg’s late career.

Its sly irony is muffled by a convoluted, fatally tedious plot.