“Death is a very entrepreneurial thing”: David Cronenberg on his new film, The Shrouds

You’re heralded as a pioneer of body horror. Do you consider your latest film, The Shrouds, a member of that genre? It seems more like a romance to me. “Body horror” is a term someone else invented to describe my work. I accept it, but genre isn’t something I think about. Some people have called The Shrouds science fiction, but all the tech we show, including the tech for the shrouds themselves, exists today. I think of the movie as something of a drama.

In it, a start-up invents a high-tech burial shroud that allows the living to monitor their loved ones’ corpses. Where did that idea come from? It’s inspired by my experience of losing my wife, Carolyn, to cancer in 2017. In my film, the character Karsh, a tech-nerd entrepreneur played by Vincent Cassel, manufactures these shrouds to deal with a similar crisis. He has this instinct to climb into his wife’s coffin, because he can’t bear to be separated from her. So his solution is to join her via tech. I performed my own version of that by making this movie. Related: The Dark Knight—David Cronenberg’s creepy obsessions say as much about us as they do about him

Karsh also says that, as an atheist, he can’t take comfort in religious grieving rituals. I assume you’re the same. I’m a card-carrying atheist. I was recently reading Christopher Hitchens, who said that all religion is a way to escape death, which is absolute but very hard to accept. The idea of ceasing to exist is scary. If you can’t come to terms with that, what do you do?

You get into the graveyard business. Death is a very entrepreneurial thing: how someone handles it doesn’t need to be universally accepted—it just has to draw enough customers. I learned about hundreds of burial methods around the world. Some people want to be ­cremated; others think such a practice is inhumane. There’s a religious group in India that lets vultures eat their dead, to return the body to the earth and benefit nature. But I think North Americans would find that creepy.

Early in the movie, Karsh is on a date with a woman who asks how he’s dealing with his wife’s death, to which he replies, “How dark are you willing to go?” Was that a nod to your personality? We all know that you lean pretty dark. I’m not much for self-reference, but after my wife died, people would ask me how I was feeling, and I did find myself responding with that exact question.

Related: “It’s always there—the dark feeling in my stomach that the world’s going to hell”—A Q&A with director Caitlin Cronenberg

Karsh also looks like you: piercing eyes, black suit, silver mane. Was that Vincent Cassel’s choice or yours? Well, Vincent and I clearly don’t look anything alike, but he did feel that he was playing me. He slowed his speech and changed his physicality to be more relaxed, smoother. I also told him, “If you want a model for your accent, it should be me.” I said that to Jude Law too, when we were making Existenz. I guess my characters have a midtown Toronto accent.

Some characters in The Shrouds get sucked into—and even turned on by—conspiracy theories as a way to deal with death. What is the connection between paranoia and loss? It’s something I’ve seen with friends. It starts with blame. Did they see the right doctor? Did they use the right medication? Acceptance is hard, whereas conspiratorial thinking is empowering: the feeling that you know the truth when others don’t. Conspiracies are creative, which can be a draw. You see that with cults. The more outrageous the claims, the more followers they attract.

The Shrouds premiered at Cannes. How is that audience different from audiences at TIFF? Sense of humour is the key distinction between the two. Despite its heavy themes, this is a very funny movie—all of my movies are. At Cannes, they’re so respectful that they’re afraid to laugh. Maybe they don’t get the jokes because this film’s humour isn’t slapstick; it’s rooted in dialogue. It’s a very Toronto sense of humour.

You’re so relaxed in person. Why do audiences think that the real you puts blood on his cornflakes in the morning? If only—at least I’d get protein that way. I’ve heard that people find me intimidating, but it’s probably because of my work and maybe just the fact that I’m a celebrity. I like to think of myself as friendly and down to earth.

Well, you made quite a beautiful movie. I like that review. I just might quote you.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.