Movie Review: THE SHROUDS

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: April 18th, 2025 / 04:13 PM

THE SHROUDS movie poster | ©2025 Janus Films/Sideshow

Rating: R
Stars: Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Holt, Jennifer Dale, Elizabeth Saunders
Writer: David Cronenberg
Director: David Cronenberg
Distributor: Sideshow/Janus Films
Release Date: April 18, 2025

Director/writer David Cronenberg has made his share of mainstream prestige cinema, including M. BUTTERFLY, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, and EASTERN PROMISES. However, when people use the adjective “Cronenbergian,” they are usually thinking of the filmmaker’s tales of eccentric scientists, bodily metamorphosis and conspiracy scenarios. A few of his more notable adventures in this vein include SCANNERS, VIDEODROME, and THE FLY.

The latest addition to the latter category is THE SHROUDS. Vincent Cassel plays Karsh Relikh, an inventor still so devastated four years after his wife Becca’s (Diane Kruger) death that the first line in the film is, “Grief is rotting your teeth” (spoken by Karsh’s dentist).

To aid Karsh’s dental and mental health, the dentist sets the widower up on a date with Myrna (Jennifer Dale). This gives Karsh the opportunity to explain his “Shrouds” project to his increasingly unsettled new acquaintance.

The restaurant where Karsh and Myrna meet is inside a cemetery, both of which he owns. Karsh has developed a technology that places cameras inside coffins with the deceased, so that survivors can view their late loved ones’ bodily decomposition in real time. Clearly, this isn’t for everyone, but Karsh finds it comforting, and so do his clients.

The set-up for THE SHROUDS is, therefore, as Cronenbergian as it could possibly be. (Seriously, have you heard of anyone else presenting this premise before?)

Then the plot starts getting complicated, with unfamiliar and unexpected biological and tech elements developing within Becca’s remains. We meet Becca’s surviving twin Terry (also Kruger), Terry’s fretful ex Maury (Guy Pearce), foreign potential investor Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt), and more.

Cassel is convincing as the moody, obsessive genius. Kruger does an excellent job of delineating the reserved Becca and the forthright Terry. Pearce is so on-target as a resentful nerd that he’s almost unrecognizable at first, and Holt is extremely smooth as Soo-Min. Elizabeth Saunders makes a strong impression as Karsh’s chief assistant.

Cronenberg’s examination of decaying corpses is as visually dazzling as can be. However, the more elaborate the narrative gets, with multiple machinations, the further we feel like we’re getting from what makes THE SHROUDS unique.

What’s going on above ground doesn’t connect readily to what’s happening in Karsh’s bespoke caskets. By the end, there’s a sense that the thriller aspect of THE SHROUDS wasn’t fully thought out or something that the filmmakers found inherently compelling, it’s just something that’s there to give the movie enough surface conventionality to make it relatively commercial.

On the upside, we’ve never seen anything quite like THE SHROUDS before. On the downside, viewers may feel that the whole is, finally, less than the sum of its parts.

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Movie Review: THE SHROUDS

A distinctly David Cronenberg film

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