Horror director David Cronenberg on his wife's death: ‘I wanted to get into the coffin, to be with her body'
would not be unhappy to see the term 'body horror' retire. The film-maker is perfectly fine with plain 'horror' and has often wondered why fellow practitioners, such as
John Carpenter
, shy away from describing themselves as artists.
'Great horror films have always been art,' he says, citing Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf. As long ago as Shivers, his breakthrough feature, from 1979, the Canadian auteur, whose films do indeed do harrowing things to the human form, used the description 'experimental physical fiction'.
Regardless of the phrasing, it's a subgenre he is more responsible for than any other director. For decades the king of venereal horror, or godfather of cyberpunk – both terms bemuse him – has probed the psychological and philosophical underpinnings of transformation, whether through disease, desire or video recorder.
His carnally focused disciples
Julia Ducournau
and
Coralie Fargeat
, along with the younger moviemaking Cronenbergs – his children Caitlin and Brandon – are part of a recognisably Cronenbergian style of film.
READ MORE
'Brandon's writing is so different from mine,' he says about the director of the recent
Infinity Pool
. 'I think he's a wonderful screenwriter. He and Cate have been on my film set since they were babies. Who knows how much that has influenced them? I don't even think they know.
'On the other hand, they make movies that I would not have made and are unique to them. Brandon was resistant to being a film-maker just because of my presence. He wanted to develop as an individual. Eventually, he caved. His films go somewhere different from mine.'
He laughs. 'Are there similarities? I'll leave that to you.'
Decades after Shivers, cinema's most provocative and intellectually rigorous film-maker continues to explore the nexus between biology, technology and identity.
In Dead Ringers, twin gynaecologists (played with compelling froideur by
Jeremy Irons
) spiral into drug-fuelled madness, sharing women and surgical delusions. In The Fly,
Jeff Goldblum
's DNA is pureed with that of the titular insect. In Crash, car-accident survivors eroticise their wounds and restage famous fatal accidents as sexual rites. In
Crimes of the Future
, set in a world where people grow extra organs and performance artists perform surgery as live art, the key mantra is, 'The body is reality.'
That and 'experimental physical fiction' are easily applicable to The Shrouds. Cronenberg's 23rd feature concerns Karsh Relikh (
Vincent Cassel
), an affluent tech entrepreneur who is consumed by grief four years after the death of his wife, Becca (
Diane Kruger
), from cancer. He pioneers GraveTech, a system that uses 'shrouds' embedded with mini‑cameras to stream the visual decay of the dead to screens in their gravestones.
The deeply personal film, which was inspired by the death of Cronenberg's wife Carolyn, in 2017, follows Relikh's fragile, obsessive mourning as it spirals into conspiratorial thinking.
Cronenberg calls it a 'perverse elegy' to his partner of 38 years.
'I had the need to somehow deal with that death in my heart,' he says. 'I wasn't sure for many years that I actually did want to do that, but eventually I did.
'My reactions to her death surprised me; they were very intense. One of them was the feeling that I wanted to get into the coffin with her. I couldn't stand being separated from her, even though she was dead. Her body was there, and I wanted to be with it.
'I thought, well, that's an interesting thing. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who's ever experienced that feeling.'
Vincent Kassel and Guy Pearce in The Shrouds, directed by David Cronenberg
The idea of the body as 'all we've got' has roots in Cronenberg's secular Jewish identity. The grandson of Lithuanian Jews peppers The Shrouds with cultural markers, including matzo‑ball soup and pastrami sandwiches. A subplot involves grave vandalism and defaced Star of David headstones. Cassel's grieving hero justifies his macabre tech with a version of Jewish belief about death: the soul lingers around the body after death, reluctant to depart fully until decay makes separation inevitable.
'The Jewishness was not by accident,' Cronenberg says. 'My wife came from a family with an Orthodox Jewish father, which had a huge influence on her, even though she wasn't really religious. So I had to deal with that in the film. What kind of burial? What kind of spiritual resonance?
'I don't believe in a soul, not in the religious sense. But, metaphorically, the Jewish idea of the soul being unwilling to leave the body is very beautiful and emotional. That's really what started that element of Jewishness in the movie. It added layers I hadn't initially planned.'
Like
David Lynch
's Mulholland Drive and
Neill Blomkamp
's District 9, The Shrouds was originally conceived for television. In 2022 Cronenberg pitched it to
Netflix
as a 10-part series, with each episode to be set in a different country.
The streaming platform commissioned him to write the first two episodes but reportedly decided that Cronenberg's novelistic, global structure was not what they 'fell in love with in the room'.
'I was disappointed The Shrouds didn't become a series,' says Cronenberg. 'I was intrigued by the idea of a streaming format – a new cinematic form. A series can be more like a novel, whereas most films are more like novellas or short stories. I would have liked to explore that.
'If Netflix had gone ahead with the series I'd probably still be shooting it now. But I liked what I had written so much that I decided to make it a feature film. Whether it was better as a feature I'll never know, but I don't regret it.'
Many reviewers have seen Cassel's character as Cronenberg's Doppelgänger. The director is not convinced.
'How boring would it be if my characters were just me?' he says. 'I want them to be new creatures. You could say every character I write has a bit of me: male, female, dog, cat. But that's not the same as trying to replicate myself.
'To make the dialogue interesting and specific, it's like I'm acting the role of that character as I write. That's different from being a surrogate. I want my characters to surprise me, to resist me. When they come alive and say or do things I didn't plan, then I know I'm on the right path.
'I think film is an experiment where you get to play with human beings and see what happens: wilful human beings who are excited to experiment with you and push you around.'
Though heartfelt and inspired by grief, The Shrouds has not been cathartic for Cronenberg. But it did enable him to articulate profound sorrow.
Vincent Kassel in The Shrouds, directed by David Cronenberg
'I had the need to somehow deal with that death in my heart. I wasn't sure how for many years,' he says. 'I had many, many strong emotions, and that surprised me. Honestly, I could make two or three more movies based on all of those feelings.
'But in The Shrouds I created a character who's a high-tech entrepreneur. His 'solution to God', so to speak, is rooted in the fact that he can't get into the coffin with his dead wife – because, of course, he would die too ...
'So the next best thing, for him, is to use his technology, his particular art form, his equivalent of a religion or a spiritual practice, to create something that brings him closer to her.
'After that point you're creating fiction. It's no longer talking about yourself; it's no longer autobiography. Even though the impulse came from your actual life.'
Between making his own films, Cronenberg has carved out a niche as an actor, often playing cerebral, enigmatic or morally ambiguous outsiders. He's the mystery man posing as the Hollywood producer who will whisk
Nicole Kidman
's murderer away to stardom in Gus Van Sant's To Die For. He's the Methodist minister who takes pity on the title character of the TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace. More recently, he's Dr Kovich, a mysterious 32nd-century Federation official, in Star Trek: Discovery.
'I never got to wear the uniform, unfortunately,' he says. 'They said that Kovich was a special character who would dress relatively normally. Initially he was called Dr Kovich, but later he suddenly became Commander Kovich, which suggests he had a special function – one I can't reveal.
'Star Trek: Discovery is a huge production in Toronto. My pitch as an actor has always been: I'm cheap and I'm available. That's why I've taken on a lot of roles when I'm in town between directing projects. It's really lovely. I start to miss being on set, and acting gives me a way to stay connected to that world.'
He's now more than a veteran.
'I'm often greeted by crew members who are the sons and daughters of people I worked with in the past. It keeps the rhythm going.'
The Shrouds is in cinemas from Friday, July 4th
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The quick version of Cairo's rise and fall is that it was a briefly prosperous river town that tried to convert into a railroad hub. A row of abandoned homes sit along a residential street in Cairo, Illinois. Photograph:The abandoned Gem theatre sit among a small number of occupied buildings in downtown Cairo, Illinois. Photograph:It experienced the US's racial tensions in reverse: archives depict early signs of integration but by the late-1960s, Cairo was in the midst of prolonged and sometimes violent civil rights protests between the prevailing white merchant class and black residents whom they refused to employ. It ultimately led to the closure of many thriving businesses and the relocation to nearby communities like Paducah and Cape Girardeau. The Gem Theatre's fate is typical of the racial fallout. 'Some parts of Cairo were integrated early on,' says Wilson. 'And other parts were not. It was weird that way. I found books that showed black students at Cairo High in the 1950s. They were marching [in the civil rights era] because they weren't hiring black people in the stores. But there were black police officers as early as 1910. [ Sydney Sweeney's jeans ad: How did we get to a culture war over this? Opens in new window ] 'The Gem Theatre... it was whites only. And there was a theatre across the street for black people that was torn down. So when integration came, the Gem closed. They just shut it down. 'When they held demonstrations outside the all-white swimming pool in Cairo, somebody purchased it and they filled it in. I think it was owned by the Rotary Club before that. The new owners were draining it and figured it would cost too much to maintain. It was a different story to what we all heard, which was that they filled it in because of integration. But that seemed to be the solution here. Tear it down. Close it up. They did not try and repair anything. So, there was a lot of old, beautiful buildings in Cairo that they just tore town.' 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But Orr still believes in his home city. 'It was fun here as a kid. We had more things than we do now,' he says. 'We used to have kids' clubs, summer camps, places to eat and go get ice-cream and candy. 'As a kid it doesn't take a lot for you to step out and have fun. There were so many people and so much interaction. You would meet friends at the park and have the whole day with them. There is a lot of pride in Cairo. It's a friendly place. Yeah, you go on YouTube and search for Cairo, you get 'ghost town' and all that. It's really nothing like that. You can walk up to a stranger and talk to them here.' Orr's business model is a clever, attractive proposition that balances the treat of eating out with the income limitations of an economically repressed community. His ambition is to encourage other young people to have faith to set up businesses in Cairo – and to attract more people to move there. An exodus that began in the 1950s has never really stopped. An enforced evacuation when the Mississippi threatened to flood in 2011 prompted a good number of families to make lives elsewhere. Within the past decade, two housing projects were demolished after the buildings were condemned after financial malfeasance. Just like that, Cairo lost 400 families. 'I'll never forget when I was hearing in New York about how they were bustin' all those immigrants,' says Orr. 'I was like, send them out to us! We want them! If we have just 500 more people moving here, that's a game changer. And that might attract another 500. That's how you grow again. 'I know a lot of Mexican people and they are some of the hardest working people anywhere. They come in and they work harder than anyone on the job. So, if they are able to fight for their citizenship and get their papers and move to areas like Cairo, that would be great. Our cities are dying because people are moving away to bigger cities. 'Just 30 minutes in any direction from us are cities that are growing. They are adding more franchise and factories and jobs. And that brings more people to live.' I have a lot of Latino customers and they were diehard Trump supporters. And now they've taken all the Trump flags and signs down — Romello Orr He notes that in the midst of rocketing property costs throughout the US, Cairo dwellings cost next to nothing, relatively speaking. Commercial lots in nearby towns start at $150,000. In Cairo, they are $5,000. A private residential property can be bought for $9,000. One February listing on Mark Twain Real Estate offered a five-bedroom period house on Park Place, in immaculate condition, complete with original chandelier, beamed ceilings, oak floors, and an enclosed front porch for $85,000. It's not impossible to imagine Orr's reversal of fortune. But it would take courage and reverse-integration. Cairo gets modest state funding. Grand plans to reimagine the riverfront as a tourist destination delivered a fraction of the required grants: official belief in Cairo is stymied by past failures. If it is to turn things around, it will be down to the locals. Recently, the city of Cairo sold the prestige mansion Riverlore to a young couple who intend to turn it into a luxury bed and breakfast. It's another small but vital promise. And somewhere in the mess of Cairo's predicament is the siren sound of contemporary America: the nasally, seductive voice of Donald Trump . He has, of course, never stood on the confluence point at Fort Defiance, nor, one can bet, has he wondered what it is like to live in an American city that, a century ago, had the Cairo Coca-Cola minor league baseball teams and its own opera house but is now a 'food desert'. Windows are boarded up at the shuttered Bennett Elementary School in Cairo, Illinois. Photograph:Trump has never been here – but then, neither has Joe Biden, nor Bill Clinton, nor George Bush, nor Barack Obama. Why would they? Cairo, like countless other river towns, was a faller in the relentless, furious drive for expansion, for more. And the US is pitiless about fallers. Trump's message and voice travelled across the interior. All but one southern Illinois county voted heavily Republican. Cairo City, 67 per cent black now, still voted Democrat in the Republican county of Alexander, but Orr knows plenty of people who were persuaded by Trump. 'I believe they were just tired of inflation. A lot of good things did come out of the Biden administration. Gas was up. Things like that. Where are we now and has it changed – or is it getting worse? 'I have a lot of Latino customers in Cairo and they were diehard Trump supporters. And now they've taken all the Trump flags and signs down because they did not believe he was going to do the mass deportations; ICE picking people up. 'So now it is more anger for the man than, Oh, we love it. But he promised he was going to do it and he fulfilled it. You can't be mad at him for that. People thought he was going to bring all the changes that he promised.' [ On my swim the water tastes industrial, of fuel and metal and dirt Opens in new window ] One of the more prominent books in the display case in the library is Herman Lantz's 1972 study A Community in Search of Itself: A Case History of Cairo, Illinois. It charts the early cocksure optimism of speculators through to the dual-edged blessing of the rivers, the abject failure of local government and 'the development of an economy greatly dependent on liquor, gambling and prostitution, which lent the town an atmosphere of lawlessness and impermanence and the development of attitudes of pessimism, apathy and resignation on the part of a populace whose community had a continual record of failure.' But 50 years after that bleak obituary, Cairo is still alive. In September it will host its 12th Heritage Blues and Gospel Festival, a free event that draws thousands of day-trippers. Orr says first-timers can never quite get over Cairo when they see it. It is its own place, a world removed from the bland uniformity of suburban America. And it has a stunning story. 'It is always that number one question,' he says, standing in the hot sun outside his restaurant on Cairo's central boulevard, designed when the future possibilities seem limitless. 'Why is Cairo not doing what it should be doing? But I feel like, sometimes it just takes someone to think different to change people's minds about a place.'
