The Shrouds is a horror-drama film, directed by David Cronenberg, and the cast includes Diane Kruger, Vincent Cassel, Guy Pearce, and Sandrine Holt, Elizabeth Saunders, Jennifer Dale.
*The Shrouds was released in festials in 2024, but theaters in 2025, so am counting it as a 2025 film
My Thoughts On The Shrouds
David Cronenberg has never been a filmmaker particularly interested in making his audience feel comfortable. That much is clear across his filmography. Once a pioneer of “body horror,” Cronenberg has since drifted into a space where psychological discomfort often eclipse story coherence. His latest effort, The Shrouds, is yet another example of this evolution, or perhaps, stagnation, depending on how generous one’s reading is.
Set in a vaguely near-future world (or perhaps just a heightened now), the film follows Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a tech entrepreneur with a very niche innovation: a system that allows the living to observe their deceased loved ones decomposing in real time through grave-mounted cameras.
It’s like Facebook Live meets Six Feet Under, but without the charm. The film’s central question seems to be, “What if grief could be monetized and surveilled?”
Of course, nothing is that straightforward in Cronenberg's world. The plot thickens when one of Karsh’s cemetery sites is vandalized, prompting an investigation that leads nowhere in particular. Interwoven is a subplot involving a pair of twin sisters (both played by Diane Kruger): one deceased, the other alive and working as a dog groomer, because apparently someone decided this film wasn’t quite weird enough already.
Karsh develops a relationship with the surviving sister, for reasons that are both emotionally ambiguous and, if we’re honest, mildly unsettling. It’s a subplot that flirts with poignancy but ultimately dissolves into awkwardness, thanks to the uncomfortable implications and clunky character development. The film gestures at themes of guilt, emotional projection, and the line between mourning and obsession, but rarely does it commit.
Vincent Cassel plays Karsh with a sort of detached elegance. He’s polished, restrained, and surprisingly subdued, possibly because even he isn’t entirely sure what his character is doing. His performance feels like a man lost not in grief, but in script notes. He’s doing his best with a role that gives him big emotions to play, but very few actual reasons to feel them.
Diane Kruger meanwhile has the unenviable task of bringing both halves of a metaphor to life. As the deceased sister, she’s an object of mourning. As the living one, she’s a stand-in for all the unresolved feelings Karsh can’t seem to face.
The dynamic might have been intriguing if the script didn’t treat her surviving character as a significantly less charismatic version of the dead one, an odd creative choice that borders on insulting.
And then there's the technology. In true Cronenberg fashion, it’s equal parts absurd and equally plausible. The “GraveTech” system is designed to provoke existential discomfort, to make us ask: Is watching the dead any different from watching the living?
It’s a big idea, daring, even. But the film never really wrestles with it in a meaningful way. Instead, it presents the tech as an emotional void, both for the characters and the audience.
What The Shrouds ultimately lacks though is any emotional connection. It’s cold, distant, and so wrapped up in its high-concept premise that it forgets to tell a story worth caring about. Cronenberg seems less interested in characters than in metaphors. Grief becomes a theme rather than an experience. The characters become vessels, hollow ones, for philosophical musings that never land.
The film does have some plus points and isn't quite an entire mess. Visually, the film is sleek, haunting, and tastefully restrained. The cinematography captures a sterile elegance that aligns perfectly with the tone, though one might argue it mirrors the emotional barrenness a little too well.
The direction is confident, too, the performances are competent, and the premise is intriguing. But as with many of Cronenberg’s recent films, the result feels like an unfinished thesis disguised as a feature film.
There are moments where the film threatens to become something moving or profound. But just as it starts to build emotional momentum, it pulls back. Instead of tension, we get detachment. At times, it feels like watching someone else read their dream journal aloud at a funeral.
The Shrouds is a film full of ideas that is without any urgency, and mystery without any suspense, and I could generously call it meditative, or more bluntly, just a bit dull.
Some will call it brilliant though, I am sure. Me? I call it baffling nonsense. But hey, maybe it went over my head (I don't think it did, but I would say that), but if it did, I am perfectly OK with that.