The Shrouds (2025) Review – David Cronenberg’s Eerie Techno-Grief Thriller Mesmerizes with Body Horror and Style

The Shrouds (2025)

Directed by: David Cronenberg

Written by: David Cronenberg

Starring: Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce

Release Date: May 2, 2025

Published: May 7, 2025

The Shrouds is a vibe movie—either you’re in for the vibe, or you’re not. David Cronenberg’s personal exploration of grief carries a modern, techno-thriller plot that he seems only mildly interested in. The story of environmental terrorists and Russian hackers is mostly a clothesline for a sleek, eerie, and edgy film about loss, sex, and identity. Cronenberg wrote The Shrouds in the aftermath of the death of his wife, Carolyn, and that raw grief is translated in classic Cronenberg fashion through body horror and transgressive sexuality.

Vincent Cassel plays Karsh, our Cronenberg surrogate, who runs a franchise of futuristic cemeteries. Gravetech, his company, uses cutting-edge tech called “Shrouds” to allow people to see full-body renderings of their deceased loved ones in their graves. Why would anyone want this? That’s for you to decide. Karsh simply tells us that viewing his late wife Becca’s (Diane Kruger) decaying body brings him comfort. He’s even built an internal network that streams her grave directly to his apartment.

The thriller elements kick in when Karsh notices mysterious growths on Becca’s skeleton. Before he can investigate, his cemetery is attacked by environmental terrorists, and his Shroud network is hacked. Desperate, Karsh turns to his ex-brother-in-law, Maury (Guy Pearce), a washed-up sad sack still pining for Becca’s twin sister, Terry (also played by Kruger). Maury agrees to help, hoping it will bring him closer to his ex-wife.

Terry, meanwhile, wants nothing to do with Maury and has formed a tentative, grief-bonded friendship with Karsh. There’s no overt attempt by Karsh to make Terry a replacement for Becca—at least not initially. But the dynamic evolves. Karsh and Maury, Becca and Terry—they’re two sides of the same coin. They mirror each other’s flaws in uncomfortable ways. In Karsh’s gaze, Maury is everything he doesn’t want to become. As for Becca and Terry, they seem to form one complete person—what Becca lost to cancer, Terry still holds, and vice versa.

Sandrine Holt rounds out the cast as Soo-Min, a potential love interest for Karsh and the first to crack his bubble of grief. But Soo-Min comes with her own baggage, echoing Karsh’s own blindness to looming emotional and psychological collapse. You might expect The Shrouds to be about healing and closure—but this is Cronenberg. There are no neat, hopeful endings here. The final scenes are twisted, dark, and haunting.

As I said, this is a vibe movie. That vibe is low-key cool: sleek visuals, gorgeously dim lighting, and plenty of sharp edges. Then there’s the body horror—Cronenberg’s signature—disturbing yet hypnotic sequences that explore decay and the fragile boundary between intimacy and revulsion. As Karsh half-heartedly follows the thriller plot, Cronenberg digs into him—and us—using sex and horror to pull us deeper into Karsh’s psyche, thick with grief, loneliness, and a morbid fascination with Becca’s corpse.

The Shrouds envelops you. You’re hypnotized by Cronenberg’s clinical precision and his uncanny ability to guide you past your objections, into the mind of his protagonist—and, by proxy, his own. It’s dark, elegant, and utterly engrossing. Cronenberg remains a master storyteller, using sex, violence, and body horror like movements in a symphony. His visuals swell and fall with rhythm, each horrific image playing like a note in a sorrowful, twisted composition.

This is one of my favorite films of 2025. Stylish, haunting, and emotionally resonant—I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I’ve been turning it over in my mind for days, pulling at different threads, and finding new satisfaction each time. The cast, led by an excellent Vincent Cassel, is top-tier. These are pros giving themselves over completely to Cronenberg’s vision, and the result is a deeply sad, aching, and fascinating work of art.

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