“Grief is rotting your teeth,” the dentist says to Karsh (Vincent Cassel). It’s more than rotting the teeth of the tech mogul- it’s become his industry since the loss of his beloved wife Becca (Diane Kruger).
Through his corporation GraveTech, he’s created a technological cemetery where the deceased are buried in a special shroud which allows families of their loved ones to watch them deteriorate in the grave. For Karsh, this is a comfort and he has a spot right next to his wife for his own body. (Cassel’s spooky resemblance to David Cronenberg is another sardonic treat). But an act of mysterious vandalism results in knocked over gravestones and a hack that disables the entire system. He engages his scruffy hacker friend Maury (Guy Pearce) to fix the problem and try to discover who is trying to destroy him. Maury has also created Karsh’s artificially intelligent avatar “Hunny,” but even the “Hunny” slowly begins to act suspicious.
Diane Kruger plays two roles- his late wife Becca, who Karsh recalls in disturbing sequences charting her physical transformation and disintegration due to her cancer treatments. Kruger also plays her neurotic dog groomer sister Terry, once married to Maury, who gets hot when she hears a conspiracy theory.
Cronenberg’s meditation on grief definitely has a melancholy quality (and feels achingly personal). But there’s also dark humor coursing through it and he manages to wittily sample from previous films- the technological paranoia of Videodrome, the surgical body horror of Crash and Crimes of the Future. It’s a film that will clearly divide audiences, but the minute that gorgeous, creepy score by Howard Shore began I was a goner.
