The Shrouds (2024) review

Unable to recover emotionally from the death of his spouse Becca (Diane Kruger), businessman Karsh (Vincent Cassel) starts GraveTech, a company that specializes in designing technologically-advanced burial shrouds that enable loved ones to watch their deceased friends and relatives decomposing in real-time, but one night the plots are vandalized and Karsh tries to figure out who's responsible, with his brother Maury (Guy Pearce) offering his digital expertise.  This film from the octogenarian Canadian auteur is coming from a personal place - his wife Carolyn passed away in 2017 and Cassel is dressed up to look like him - and his usual merging of technology and mortality is both perverse and weirdly fascinating, except the narrative is deeply unfocused, as it dissolves into a bunch of conspiracy theories and paranoia (is it the Russians?  the Chinese?) and the frequent sex scenes involving Karsh and his sister-in-law Terry (Kruger again) as well as visually-impaired Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt) are, to put it mildly, terribly awkward (they might even invite some unwanted giggles).  There are multiple holes in the "story" too - for example: how did Karsh not release Maury was already missing two fingers? and why didn't he install extra security cameras to monitor the cemetery in case of intrusion? - but those aren't really the point, as it's more about Cronenberg's concern over his own time left on Earth and fear of the rapid development (and hackability) of artificial intelligence.  And let's be totally honest: there isn't another filmmaker, dead or alive, who could have made this.