Title: The Shrouds
Describe This Movie In One An American Werewolf in London Quote:
JACK: Debbie Klein cried a lot. So, so, you know what she does? She’s soooo grief-stricken, she runs to find solace in Mark Levine’s bed.
DAVID: Mark… Levine?
JACK: An asshole! Life mocks me even in death.
Brief Plot Synopsis: Alice Cooper’s “I Love the Dead” in movie form.
Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: 3 Mandylions out of 5.
Tagline: N/A
Better Tagline: “Puts the ‘body’ in ‘body horror.”
Not So Brief Plot Synopsis: Still grieving the death of his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) seven years ago, Karsh (Vincent Cassel) designs GraveTech, a burial technology that allows loved ones to look in on the deceased. As a business strategy, it has nowhere to go but up (pun intended). But when parties unknown vandalize his cemetery — including his wife’s resting place — Karsh enlists his brother-in-law Maury (Guy Pearce), Becca’s sister Terry (also Diane Kruger), and AI assistant Hunny (also Diane Kruger) to get to the bottom of things.
“Critical” Analysis: “Grief is rotting your teeth.”
Not many opening lines capture both the thrust of a movie and the filmmaker’s modus operandi as this one from The Shrouds, the latest from legendary director David Cronenberg. Our protagonist Karsh Relikh (get it?) points out that his obsession over his wife’s passing is only *weakening* his teeth, all while (understandably) not telling his dentist he’s still having dreams about his dead wife.
The shrouds in question were developed by Karsh — with a little outside help, which will be important later on — to allow him to stay virtually close to Becca’s body, even as it decays. His cemetery-adjacent restaurant is also festooned with these metallic burial wraps, which serve as virtual corpse cameras. If nothing else, it proves to be a questionable first date strategy. But then, Karsh is nowhere near moving on.
Another case in point: his problematic relationship with sister-in-law Terry, who considers him a “corpse voyeur.” She’s also something of a conspiracy aficionado (putting it mildly), and believes the high-res images of Becca’s corpse reveal one or more tracking devices attached to her sister’s bones. Were they implanted by Becca’s doctors as a way to forward their experimental treatments? Or are more sinister forces at play?
After his graveyard is desecrated, Karsh goes to Terry’s ex Maury, GraveTech’s IT guy, to determine who was behind the act. Pearce’s Maury is more pre-A.I.M. Aldrich Killian from Iron Man 3 than The Brutalist’s Harrison Van Buren. He’s also convinced Karsh wants to have sex with Terry. Hold that thought.
The Shrouds digs deep into the process of grieving, Karsh sells the matrimonial home and also has Maury design an AI assistant that looks and sounds like Becca. Karsh’s dreams of his dead wife highlight the struggle between his lingering affection for her and his disquiet at her progressive disintegration. Think dead Jack in An American Werewolf in London, only dismembered instead of decaying. And naked.
Also, as with all things Cronenberg, the advantages and pitfalls of technology play a big role. Karsh is often woefully naïve about the potential vulnerabilities in both his corpse video (developed with the help of a tech team from China, who are always trustworthy in this regard) and his AI buddy. There’s a lot of interesting possibilities teased here, until Karsh’s grieving process finds him in a couple other women’s beds.
The name “David Cronenberg” conjures up a lot of things: body horror and/or trauma, the melding of technology and flesh, and the corrosive effects of disease upon both the patient and those around them. Sex also plays a big part in his films, often infamously so: A History of Violence, Crimes of the Future, Crash — the good one, not the Best Picture winner, Rabid … now that I think about it, maybe Scanners and The Dead Zone are his only two relatively chaste efforts.
Which is fine, except when Cronenberg dangles plot pathways involving electronic sabotage, the surveillance state, and the perversion of artificial intelligence, only to spend a not insignificant amount of screen time on topless Diane Kruger. Not that I’m complaining.
In an interview, Cronenberg said he wrote The Shrouds while grieving the loss of his own wife, Cynthia Zeifman, who also passed seven years ago. It isn’t the first time he’s drawn on personal experiences for his films (The Brood was written during his divorce from Margaret Hindson), and while The Shrouds offers some glimpses into that process, it never fully coalesces.
The Shrouds is in theaters today. For the curious, neither The Accountant 2 or Until Dawn were screened for Houston critics.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
