Cronenberg, the relevance of body horror and the burden of being a genius

It is clear that the name David Cronenberg - which has a curiously fitting phonetic component for the character and his art - carries a certain weight. After all, he is a genius. But not one of those labeled as such for having nailed a couple of films and some good press conference quips. No, we're talking about a true visionary, capable of creating a language suited to share his vision where the body in its most organic dimension becomes an essential narrative element. To convey his visceral torments. For fans who love strange creatures, monsters, and the like, I haven't done much of that lately. It's true. But as the director himself said when his first novel, Consumed, was released, «if you're a critic looking for thematic connections between the films, I think you can see a perfect connection between all of them. It depends on your approach to cinema, both as a critic and as a fan. For me, the creative process is exactly the same.»

We are talking about the mind behind Shivers (They Came from Within in Italy), a film in which in 1975 the fear of AIDS was perfectly described. Too bad the world would only learn about the virus five years later. And we could go on forever, highlighting how the Canadian director said everything (and before everyone else) about the media in Videodrome, new technologies in eXistenZ or sex in Crash, and so on. In front of giants, like in epic poems when a character faces the gods, certain questions and reflections arise. After saying so much over 50 years, does Cronenberg still have something to say? Does body horror still make sense to exist? Questions we try to answer after watching The Shrouds, a new film directed by the Canadian director, produced by Saint Laurent and presented these days at the Cannes Film Festival.

The Shrouds: Cronenberg's latest body horror

Body horror, at least as we understand it in the cinematic context, was invented by Cronenberg. This led the genre to follow the trends, themes, and tendencies of its author, at least until the late '90s. Indeed, with the turn of the century, the Canadian stopped making them in the strict sense, moving towards more psychological themes (A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, and so on). This was until 2022, when Cronenberg decided to return to cinema, after almost a decade-long hiatus from that wonderful artistic suicide that was Maps to the Stars, with Crimes of the Future. A film that carried the allure of a comeback, a couple of good insights but added little to what had been said throughout his career.

After two years, riding a (moderate) wave of general enthusiasm, here comes The Shrouds. Yet another interaction with the genre, though charged with a striking premise: a man, marked by the loss of his wife, decides to invent a technology that allows him to observe in real-time the decomposition of her body. Let's add that the protagonist, from the look sported by Vincent Cassel, seems in every way an alter ego of Cronenberg, who has recently lost his spouse. An alignment of factors that seemed perfect for a last dance of the genre. A letter to death.

Do Cronenberg and body horror still have something to say?

Crash by David Cronenberg

Crimes of the future by David Cronenberg

Videodrome by David Cronenberg

Existenz by David Cronenberg

The Shrouds however quickly derails, getting lost in a pointless and worrying conspiracy plot, as boring as it is frustrating. And especially in a sloppy technical realization, poor in ideas, design, and set design. Yet the initial premise was enough to remind us how powerful body horror can be, potentially a perfect metaphor for grief processing. Watching the memory and part of your life crumble before your eyes, without being able to do anything to stop it. And what better conveys the concept than the live decomposition of a body.

Perhaps Cronenberg is no longer suited for the genre he invented. After all, the essence of body horror connects the bodily sphere to everything else and thus with the passage of time, the body decays and consequently everything else. Maybe David no longer has anything to give to the genre. But, as seen, the same does not apply to body horror. And it is wonderful that, at a time when the concept of re-appropriation of the female body is so central, it is women who have taken control of the genre in recent years. Like Julia Ducournau with Titane, Palme d'Or in 2021. Or like Coralie Fargeat, also in this Cannes 2024 with The Substance, starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, which gave us the most disruptive and surprising film of this Festival, one we will surely revisit in the coming months.

The need to be iconoclasts

To be clear, in the critical field, there is never pleasure in speaking ill of someone. Let alone when it comes to criticizing authors like David Cronenberg (or as happened in previous days with Coppola), people who built the foundations on which our passion rests. But such authors emerged by "killing" the past. The New Hollywood - of which the Canadian Cronenberg was not technically part but emerged in the same period - was based on breaking with past models. So why are we so reluctant today to raise doubts about the work of great masters? Why do we feel the need to be reverent towards certain names? It would be appropriate to avoid such contempt and instead grant them, always with respect, the honor of arms.