by Anthony O'Connor

Year:  2024

Director:  David Cronenberg

Rated:  MA

Release:  3 July 2025

Distributor: Rialto

Running time: 119 minutes

Worth: $13.50
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Cast:
Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Holt, Elizabeth Saunders

Intro:
… a strikingly inert film …

It’s always interesting to see what legendary genre movie directors do later in their lives. For John Carpenter it was the choice to step away from films and instead tour and play music with his son and godson, not to mention getting baked and giving hilarious interviews. For George Miller, it’s the choice to keep going, knocking out Furiosa well into his 70s with more on the way. For David Cronenberg, the so-called “King of Venereal Horror” it’s a decision to keep making movies, but far more personal and hard to approach than some of his earlier work. This can be both a positive and negative thing, which neatly summarises The Shrouds, his latest and most personal film to date.

The Shrouds is the story of wealthy widower Karsh (Vincent Cassel), the inventor of “GraveTech” a technology that allows the bereaved to see live footage of their loved one’s decomposing bodies in real time. Karsh is trying to move on from the death of his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) four years earlier, but is plagued by endless melancholy, disturbing dreams and some person or organisation who seems to want to hack GraveTech and destroy his business. There’s also something very wrong with his AI personal assistant Hunny (voiced by Diane Kruger), Becca’s paranoid sister, Terry (also Diane Kruger) and Terry’s twitchy ex-husband,

Despite the thriller/espionage/body horror trappings of The Shrouds, this is a very different film to what you might expect from the bloke who gave us The Fly, Videodrome and Scanners. Although the central idea of GraveTech is dark and disturbing, it pales in comparison to the real horror on show here – the trauma of losing a long-term life partner.

The Shrouds is an unflinching and often brutally frank dissection of what it means to a psyche to no longer have its other half. It’s not an easy watch. Karsh’s nightmares where Becca is slowly reduced one limb or bone at a time are particularly queasy, tapping into the very real life terror that anyone who has had a loved one die slowly of cancer knows all too well. Cronenberg has admitted that this is a very personal and autobiographical story, and it really feels like a man exploring his inner darkness.

While that aspect is certainly laudable and brave, it doesn’t always translate into a particularly entertaining film. Despite strong performances from everyone, but particularly Cassel and Kruger, this is a strikingly inert film, spending loads of time with extremely bougie people having lengthy, dry conversations in sterile environments. The social connotations of GraveTech are given lip service but are rarely explored in any meaningful way and the number of times scenes take place through a phone’s screen does begin to test one’s patience. The central mystery also isn’t resolved particularly satisfyingly, because of course The Shrouds isn’t really a mystery, it’s a deep dive into grief and its transformative effects.

David Cronenberg is an absolute legend of cinema who has delivered some of the most strikingly twisted visions of body horror and menacing sci-fi to date. With The Shrouds he taps into something else entirely, and while the themes are rich and weighty, they’re not always delivered in the most dynamic or compelling way. Still and all, if the 82-year-old Canadian wants to keep pushing the envelope, who are we to argue? Although it’s not his best film, the world is better with David Cronenberg’s bizarre, singular vision and The Shrouds is worth watching for that at the very least.