The Shrouds (2024)

In one of the first scenes, Karsh explains to a date that the GraveTech cemetery he built, where Becca, his Jewish wife, is buried, is a “non-denominational” grounds. This isn’t quite the right word considering the inter-faith inhabitants of the cemetery. Karsh, a gentile, says that in the end he’ll be buried there, next to Becca. This is not the last time in The Shrouds that Karsh will use an exact, but incorrect, word. As a tech founder, it’d be normal for Karsh to misfield words. Many people with CEO-brain are naive to a fault and put boundless trust in the specialists around them. Karsh delegates to his dead wife’s sister’s specialist ex-husband Maury so that he can sleep, drive around in his Tesla, and emote.

It’d also be normal for the specialists and executive-types around him to use the wrong words. And they do, unless in this near-future Canada it’s accurate to call one’s AI personal assistant their “avatar.” An avatar is meant to be a representation of one’s self. Karsh has no avatar in the film. Although Karsh’s personal assistant Hunny represents him in video calls, she is importantly not Karsh, but a Memoji-esque representation of his late wife created by Maury.

I’m inclined to attribute the wrongful usage of the word “avatar” to the writer-director, who has an immaculate history of making the holiest vibes-based cinema. He need not care whether he gets things a little wrong, and his work is often more interesting because of what he gets wrong. Then, maybe he also means to say that after death, the manifestation of our loved ones say more about us than anyone else. We have Cronenberg on record saying that The Shrouds is “autobiographical,” inspired by the loss of his wife Carolyn. So Karsh is the avatar, a Cronenberg stand-in, and the Director-Artist who keeps the distorted love-memories alive through his own flawed creations.