Frances Oliver
I am fortunate in belonging to a small film club mainly featuring old films; its weekly shows take up most of my movie-going. I am also partial to – not too gruesome – horror movies; so when I saw our Newlyn cinema was showing a David Kronenberg film, The Shrouds, I thought I should go and find how the old Hammer classics have evolved.
Evolved they certainly have. In his luxurious dark emporium we meet Karsh, a fabulously rich and successful tycoon, inventor of a special high-tech shroud. A shroud for which that absurdly abused adjective ‘incredible’ could be employed with justification. The shrouds are designed and wired so that the living mourners can, on screens or smartphones, watch their loved ones decay.
And the shrouds have gone viral. Karsh has provided graveyards with standard identical tombstones, numbered for identification, for the dead in their shrouds. All the world’s major cities now have such a cemetery. And why has Karsh devised this bizarre invention? As he explains to a puzzled and rather unappreciative internet date, he loved his young wife’s body so much he couldn’t bear to stop contemplating it. Even in decay.
It’s an interesting black comedy idea, an inversion of the zombie movie, not the dead coming back to feed on the living but the living, through their morbid voyeurism, feeding on the decaying dead. But Karsh, not totally satisfied by contemplation of the adored corpse, still has some normal urges, as internet dates would imply, and covets the healthy body of his pretty dog-groomer sister-in-law (where have we seen pretty dog-groomers before?).
Yet all is not well in this ever-growing, financially booming necrophilic empire. Karsh’s own pioneer graveyard, where he lives in a black apartment and presides over a sinister black restaurant, is vandalised. Who is behind it? Karsh consults his nerdy but brilliant bespectacled partner, the classic Clark Kent type of old Hollywood, recently divorced from Karsh’s sister-in-law. Karsh being so infinitely wealthy decides not to contact the police or insurance company, just to have it all put right again. But wait – why were only certain graves vandalised? And why are there suddenly mysterious little growths visible on some of the corpses? Are they some kind of information-gathering device aimed at the corpse-watching living, and who is behind that? Is it the Russians? Is it the Chinese? Worse – is it an insider? (Not a corpse, because they really are dead.) And the pretty sister-in-law – why did she ever marry the nerdy genius? She too is not normal – her great turn-on is hearing conspiracy theories. She married the inventor for his paranoia. Tell her a conspiracy theory and she demands sex – to Karsh’s delight; but even during the obligatory bonking scene they continue to trade speculations about who might be behind it all… and the dead wife’s oncologist who she worshipped, was he experimenting on her? And did she sleep with him? Etc, etc.
Then, the movie’s most startling and certainly most tasteless scene – Karsh’s faithful blonde confidante screen avatar appears suddenly stark naked and with the same surgery scars as Karsh’s dead wife. The avatar is not what she seems. And who is behind her? Is it the Russians? Is it the Chinese – or even the CIA? Just in case you have the stomach to see this, I won’t give the denouement away. Let me just say that Karsh is eventually borne off to Hungary by the glamorous black-haired wife of a terminally ill Hungarian tycoon who wants Karsh to establish a new graveyard near Budapest where this wealthy man plans soon to lie. “You’ll love Transylvania,” purrs the glamorous wife over their in-flight champagne (now where have we heard of Transylvania before?).
This is actually a very cunning and political satire. You could say it lays bare the growing decay of our information and conspiracy obsessed society in picturing dissolution itself as another entertainment… for the rich. It’s a movie almost better in retrospect, where the cleverness is more evident than the corpses; after and hour and a half I found myself getting tired of the unending dark atmosphere, debates and speculations, or maybe it’s all just that bit too gruesome and far out.
Yet some issues ago, I wrote, as a satire, an advertisement for a disaster tourism website. Disaster tourism exists, and my satire itself was inspired by Pendery Weekes’s article (NAE issue 33, Vol 5) on something real, jewellery made from human embryos. Maybe – though we don’t yet have the actual invention or the Elon Musk to produce it – Karsh’s shroud is not so far out after all. So keep an eye on big planning applications.
The next necrophile empire could begin near you.
