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Yahoo
25-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
With 76% on RT, Is David Cronenberg's 'The Shrouds' Worth Your Time?
Regardless of what might be going on in the world, it's reassuring to know we can still rely on a new David Cronenberg film every few years. The legendary Canadian director essentially birthed the body-horror genre with his third feature, Shivers (1975), and has proceeded over the next five decades to expand and evolve his filmography in a way few filmmakers have. Now, he's back with his 23rd feature, The Shrouds, a classically Cronenbergian tale which tackles complex emotions of grief, surveillance and voyeurism, and, of course, amorous conspiracy theorists. Vincent Cassel stars in his third collaboration with the director following the stellar Russian mob thriller Eastern Promises (2008) and the Sigmund Freud-Carl Jung biopic A Dangerous Method (2011). Here, the actor is styled to look uncannily like Cronenberg, his white quiff and gaunt features so reminiscent that you may for a moment believe Cronenberg has decided to feature himself on the film's poster, but the choice is appropriately thematic rather than eye-narrowingly metatextual. Cassel plays Karsh, an entrepreneur with unlimited financial resources who, four years after the death of his wife, Becca (Diane Kruger), from cancer, has established GraveTech, a cutting-edge business which allows relatives to view the decomposition of their loved ones in real time. As is well documented, Cronenberg lost his wife of 38 years, Carolyn, to cancer in 2017. He's spoken at length about how this film is an exploration of his own grieving process, but crucially not an autobiographical one. It goes without saying that The Shrouds is one of the director's most personal and most haunting works. It's also one of his most subdued and thoughtful, which adds to its otherworldly a brazenly explanatory opening scene, Karsh tells a blind date (an exceptional Jennifer Dale, nearly stealing the picture in two scenes) that when he watched Becca's coffin lowered into the ground, he felt 'an intense, visceral urge to get into the box with her…I couldn't stand it that she was alone in there and that I would never know what was happening to her.' And while it may sound grisly, business is booming. The garden outside of the ritzy restaurant, which Karsh also owns, is dotted with graves affixed with screens which deliver 24/7 video feeds from within the coffins. 'Can I smoke?' Karsh's date deadpans after being shown a live feed of a skeletal, partially mutilated Becca. As Karsh considers where to open the next GraveTech location, a hack of the company's database and the subsequent vandalism of several graves, including Becca's, sends the entrepreneur reeling. At the same time, he begins noticing new, unexplained growths on Becca's corpse. He enlists the help of both Becca's sister, Terry (also played by Kruger), and her ex-husband, a paranoid techie named Maury (Guy Pearce), who coded GraveTech's security and offers to help Karsh determine from where the hack originated. Karsh shares his theories behind the subterfuge with Terry, who finds herself sexually aroused by the mystery. Meanwhile, Karsh begins an affair with Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt), the blind wife of a CEO who's pressuring Karsh to bring GraveTech to Budapest. There's also the matter of Hunny, Karsh's AI assistant who's designed to resemble Becca and is likewise played by Kruger in a third role. The Shrouds is Cronenberg's best film since 2005's A History of Violence, and his most classically Cronenbergian film in decades. Beginning with 1996's Crash and culminating with 2014's Maps to the Stars, Cronenberg left behind the scrungy sci-fi conceits for which he's best known and took on a variety of disparate genres onto which he laid his singular stamp. (The sole outlier in this period was 1997's eXistenZ, which was uber-Cronenberg but is regarded as one of his lesser works.) During this time, Cronenberg made some of his most interesting pictures, including Spider (2002), Cosmopolis (2012), and A History of Violence, which is arguably his masterpiece. He returned to his roots in 2022 with Crimes of the Future, and while it was nice to see Cronenberg back in the body-horror saddle, that film felt very much like a retread of ideas he'd explored more furtively in the past. (It was also, narratively speaking, muddled and not particularly gripping.) Even the title and some key elements, though notably not the main plot, were taken from Cronenberg's 1970 second feature. But The Shrouds is a seminal Cronenberg movie, one brimming with fresh and unexplored pathologies. It's thrilling to see the 82-year-old filmmaker working at such a high level, producing work that's as compelling and groundbreaking as his most revolutionary projects. His latest flirts tangentially, almost teasingly, with the body-horror genre, but Cronenberg rejects any explicit move into that territory. As ever, the director isn't content to rest on his laurels; he's also not concerned about giving audiences what they're expecting, a blessing in this time of pre-packaged is a movie of ideas—it is, almost literally, a movie about theories—and Cronenberg certainly has many he wishes to work out. The Shrouds is about our collective relationship with grief and letting go of lost loves; the current state of digital voyeurism and the moralities thereof; the line between clinical trials and human experiments; and how we deal with the inevitable breakdown of our own bodies. It's also, ultimately, the most demented film ever made about a widower finding another chance at love. The Shrouds is knowingly absurd, but never camp, and it's also very funny in that subtle, macabre way in which Cronenberg so excels. If there's any fault with the film, it's that it is slightly overstuffed with characters and notions. But that's also something to celebrate, because the precise film Cronenberg wished to make is up there on the screen. Even if that leads to occasional narrative wonkiness, it's far more thrilling to have his vision presented unfettered. It's worth reiterating how remarkably rare it is to have an iconic filmmaker of Cronenberg's vintage still producing work which feels as vital and cutting-edge as his earliest works. Cronenberg's films have consistently returned to examinations of the human condition—humanity, mortality, love, the soul's relationship with a corporeal being—through body deterioration, from Shivers and Rabid (1977) to The Fly (1986), Crash, and now The Shrouds. He's not a religious filmmaker, but he's certainly a spiritual one. The Shrouds fits snugly in with the director's preoccupations, and it's an exhilarating escalation of his filmography. Here, he's revisiting past ideas with freshened eyes and interrogating new obsessions with a vibrant curiosity which feels like the work of a much younger and hungrier filmmaker. In the fifth decade of his career, Cronenberg is making his most exciting films yet. Here's hoping we get many 76% on RT, Is David Cronenberg's 'The Shrouds' Worth Your Time? first appeared on Men's Journal on Jul 5, 2025 Solve the daily Crossword
ABC News
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
David Cronenberg made The Shrouds as a way to process the grief over his wife's death
Body horror is having a moment, while its dad has a phone in front of his face. The gushing critical and cultural success of The Substance — the first body horror nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars — is just the tip of a resurgence, following the likes of Fresh, A Different Man, Infinity Pool, Malignant and Palme d'Or winner Titane. Fast Facts about The Shrouds What: Necrophilic-leaning tech CEO misses his dead wife. Starring: Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce Directed by: David Cronenberg Where: In cinemas now Likely to make you feel: Unsettled and cold (whether that's positive will depend on you) The biggest signifier of the genre's resurgence, though, was 2022's Crimes of The Future, the long-awaited return to body horror from David Cronenburg — the man who defined the genre in the 70s and 80s with The Fly, Videodrome and Scanners among others. Despite Crime's acclaim, Cronenberg has again shifted away from body horror with his follow-up The Shrouds, a relatively restrained and cold drama — despite a crazed premise. Even if it's not filled with the squelches and screams of a body keeping, ignoring or sublimating to the score, it will leave you deeply affected — if you can accept its stilted dialogue and convoluted plot as purposeful. The Shrouds follows Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a grieving widow who founded GraveTech — a cemetery that offers grievers a live-streamed image of their loved ones' decomposing corpse, viewable in 3D and 8K from a tombstone screen, after logging in via an app. GraveTech is a nascent tech start-up, with only a dozen or so clients, and the Toronto graveyard doubling as a showroom. At its centre is a sleek restaurant with floor-to-ceiling windows, resembling an austere contemporary art gallery with outdoor activations. At the film's beginning, Karsh takes a blind date there and, after a subdued lunch, shows her the live footage of his late wife Becca's (Diane Kruger) skeleton while they stand before her grave, calling it "digital penetration". She's repulsed and soon leaves. But before she does, she can't help but revert her gaze to his stream, remarking how the footage — a high-tech shroud over the body, which renders corpses as though floating through space — is somewhat beautiful. "It has drained away the fluid of grief that was drowning me," says Karsh. "That was killing me." Not exactly first date material — and neither is The Shrouds, though there's romance hiding deep within. When the cemetery is vandalised, Karsh, Becca's sister Terry (also Kruger) and Terry's ex-husband Maury (Guy Pearce) are consumed by conspiracies, investigating whether strange growths on Becca's skeleton suggest a medical cover-up or interference from China, Russia or some other shadowy force. Despite the premise, Cronenberg bills The Shrouds as his most personal work ever. Now 82, he wrote the screenplay after his long-term wife, the filmmaker Carolyn Zeifman, died in 2017. With short white hair and a gangly intensity, Karsh is clearly a proxy for Cronenberg. It's also clear that Karsh is consumed by grief — and it often emerges via a desire for Becca's body, whether looking at her skeleton, her identical sister, or through dreams where Becca appears naked, increasingly scarred and amputated by surgeries. But Karsh's necrophilic impulses are at odds with The Shrouds' sense of cleanliness: It's hard to imagine him or the film with dirt under their nails, let alone digging through the earth. This is a deeply clinical visual world, far removed from the visceral sounds and throbbing violence of, say, his 1999 film Existenz. There's a tech-world cleanliness to Karsh's life, which is designed to be as frictionless as possible — from his nondescript wardrobe, to his self-driving Tesla, to his AI personal assistant Hunny (also voiced by Kruger). Together with the production designer Carol Spier, cinematographer Douglas Koch creates a pristine Toronto closer to the quiet luxury sheen of Succession than any of Cronenberg's more surreal works. It approaches blandness, but that seems to be the point, given The Shrouds is fixated on screens. Where most filmmakers try to avoid shooting characters staring at their phones or at least explore different ways to shoot, Cronenberg has gone verité when it comes to how often Karsh is on a laptop, phone or tablet. Not only are there several elongated scenes where Karsh talks with Hunny — who is as visually soulless as a Metaverse avatar — but we're often shown footage on iPhones, with Koch holding the frame on a hand holding the screen. The videos shown are, true-to-life, often poorly shot, with ugly or obstructive angles of scenes, where faces are cut off in favour of their torso. It'll be followed by a technically wonderful shot, with gorgeous lighting and framing, but of a self-driving Tesla, no life present. Dialogue, too, is ceaseless and often stilted — given Pearce, Cassel and Kruger's previous work, it's hard to believe they weren't encouraged into jarring, awkward line reads. Combined, the janky, occasionally ugly elements of The Shrouds give the film its own dream-like atmosphere, both banal and deeply strange. If The Shrouds was a debut film, it might be hard to give it so much grace, and many people won't have the patience to, finding it too austere and removed for a film about grief. But Cronenberg could have easily created a visceral, violent body horror about grief. Instead, late into his career, he's making something much more daring. By sitting in the visual horror of a tech-sanitised world, where texture and substance is erased in favour of ease, The Shrouds has a technical unease to it, as if something is missing. Cronenberg recently said he "lost the will to make movies" after Zeifman died. And while he proved that he could create an excellent return-to-form just two years ago with Crimes of The Future, nothing quite works here. That might make it one of the most quietly profound films about grief he could make.
Metro
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
'Expansively unsettling' and deeply personal horror film finally released in UK
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video David Cronenberg's latest film The Shrouds is here after being released in the US months prior – and it has been described as 'horrific' and 'fearless.' The revered director – best known for Crash, The Fly, Dead Ringers, and many other genre films – explores death and grief to devastating effect following the story of Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a creative entrepreneur who lost his wife Becca (Diane Kruger). He developed a technology known as The Shrouds, which allows users to monitor a deceased person's body as it decomposes via an app called GraveTech. After graves are destroyed in a GraveTech cemetery, including Becca's, Karsh begins to question if her death was part of a larger conspiracy as he investigates the attack. It has proved to be a deeply personal project for Cronenberg, inspired by his wife, Carolyn Cronenberg, who died of cancer at age 67 in 2017. After being released in the US back in April, the film has finally arrived in the UK as of today – but be warned, it has been hailed 'expansively unsettling' and 'hollowing.' It holds a 76% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the critics' consensus reading: 'Ruminating on the love within loss, The Shrouds is a personal and peculiar examination of grief by director David Cronenberg.' In their review, Empire wrote: 'It's a hypnotic descent into the darkness of grief, punctuated by perverse Cronenbergian pleasures.' The Washington Post said The Shrouds 'throbs with raw, human, horrific honesty', while the San Jose Mercury pondered 'How lucky we are to have this boundary pusher still thinking up such bold and provocative films.' Globe and Mail boldly stated: 'With The Shrouds, the filmmaker — not only one of Canada's greatest creations, but cinema's, too — has delivered what might be his career-defining masterpiece.' The Ringer heaped praise on Cronenberg, adding: 'Like 2022's superb Crimes of the Future, The Shrouds serves as a reminder that, at 81 years old, Cronenberg is still one of the world's great filmmakers: bold, uncompromising, clever, and fearless.' Speaking to Variety, Cronenberg explained how he developed the concept of The Shrouds and how the film was almost a Netflix series. 'It was pre-pandemic. I went to L.A. to pitch it to Netflix. At that point, it was a well-formed idea, but it wasn't a script yet,' he revealed. 'The people I talked to there were very receptive, and Netflix gave me the OK to start writing what they call the prototype, which was the first episode of what was then going to be a series. 'And then they liked that enough to tell me to go ahead and write the second episode. After that, they decided not to go forward for various reasons.' More Trending Despite the subject matter of the film and its inspiration, the History of Violence director said he 'did not experience any catharsis' making it, describing grief as 'forever.' 'I don't really think of art as therapy. I don't think it works that way,' he continued. 'If you're an artist, everything you make, you work out of your life experience, no matter what that is. Whether you're rehashing something from your distant past or your present circumstances, there's always creative energy that can be mined from your life. ' The Shrouds is in cinemas now . Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Jurassic World Rebirth leaves fans with clenched stomachs after 'genuinely tense' film debuts MORE: Eagerly anticipated horror's producer explains why '0.0 percent watchable' film flopped MORE: Horror fans 'terrified' after disturbing VHS recordings appear in US towns
Irish Independent
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
The Shrouds review: Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, and some icky ‘GraveTech' make for a lifeless horror
That man is Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a wealthy widower who invests his fortune in GraveTech – a ghastly burial enterprise that allows people like him to livestream images of their loved ones' decomposing corpses. It involves an elaborate shroud, and Karsh should probably see a therapist. Instead, he dreams of being reunited with wife Becca (Diane Kruger) and is devastated to discover someone has vandalised her grave. Becca's twin Terry (also Kruger) tries to help; so does Terry's ex, a greasy brainbox named Maury (Guy Pearce). Dicey love affairs and grisly medical conspiracies complicate matters. Cronenberg has made ickier horrors, but I'm not sure he's made a film quite as lifeless as The Shrouds. It's a personal project for the Canadian auteur, whose film editor wife Carolyn Zeifman died in 2017 – and if you look hard enough, you can see what he's trying to get at. Silly, superficial plot swerves and contrived, theatrical exchanges spoil the tension. A disappointment.
Yahoo
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'The Shrouds': David Cronenberg on how technology reflects 'the best part of us and the worst part of us'
Famed filmmaker David Cronenberg's newest film The Shrouds (now in theatres) has been marked as his most personal film work to date. Starring Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Sandrine Holt, Guy Pearce, Jennifer Dale and Elizabeth Saunders, the beginning of Cronenberg's process to craft the film came after the death of his wife, Carolyn Zeifman. The film's lead character Karsh (Vincent Cassel), with a striking resemblance to Cronenberg in The Shrouds, started a company called GraveTech, inventing technology to enable people to monitor the corpse of their dead loved ones. Karsh uses the technology to observe his late wife Becca (Diane Kruger). But when the GraveTech cemetery is vandalized and the system hacked, that's when the mystery begins, with Karsh seeking assistance from Becca's sister Terry (also played by Kruger), and Terry's ex Maury (Guy Pearce). Eventually we meet blind woman Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt), the wife of one of GraveTech's clients, and Soo-Min is managing the creation of a Budapest GraveTech cemetery, as her husband's death approaches. As Cronenberg explained, while The Shrouds began after his wife's death, through working on the film the work became more of a fictional venture. "As soon as you start to write, it becomes fiction, and suddenly you're not restricted by the reality of what happened to you," Cronenberg told Yahoo Canada during last year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). "You are now creating fictional characters and fictional situations, and it gives you some interesting distance." "The initial inspiration for it is still always there, but it becomes further and further from you. It's not really an attempt to capture the exact essence of the past or anything like that. ... And then for a writer, that's exciting, the creative element of it, of shaping a new story, inventing characters and so on. ... It's only when you're showing the film and you no longer have to control things and shape things that it has an emotional impact on you. Really it comes to life only then, when you're screening the film for other people." In terms of exploring of grief through paranoia and conspiracy element of the film, Cronenberg identified that much of those elements came from how people respond to loss. "I noticed over many, many years of various people, friends, family, who have suffered the loss of somebody close, that there is this sort of strange need to blame someone for something, whether they blame themselves or they're blaming the doctors, the treatment, the misdiagnosis, the accident that shouldn't have happened," Cronenberg said. "There seems to be a need to find meaning in it. You know, it's very difficult to accept that these things happen for no actual good reason." For Holt, she described working on The Shrouds as an appealing challenge, including navigating how to play a blind character. "I wasn't at first sure I was what they were looking for when I got the audition," Holt said. "But I sort of did my interpretation and David seemed to like it." Describing her collaboration with Cronenberg, she said it was a very "relaxed" atmosphere. "For me, personally, I sort of came in towards the end, and I don't live in Toronto, so I really just met him when I came in, and he's great," Holt said. "He just sort of lets you ... do your own thing, and if he has any notes, he gives them to you. But it's very relaxed. The atmosphere on set is very, very chill, very pleasant." "There wasn't any real rehearsal period, but ... you can feel that everybody's just really trying to make something meaningful. From the costume designer to the DP, every single person that's on that set is really bringing their best." While much of Cronenberg's work has looked at the power of technology and technological paranoia, with The Shrouds he continues to lean into the fact that human are technological beings. "For me, technology has always been an extension of what it is that makes us human, and so I always expect technology to reflect what we are, the best part of us and the worst part of us," Cronenberg said. "People talk about artificial intelligence, for example, I think it's the same thing. It will do horrible things, and it will do wonderful things, just the way humans do both of those things." In a separate interview, Holt also highlighted the interested intersection of technology and loneliness. "I was just thinking about how technology has affected our lives in every facet at this point, from dating to learning to to everything," she said. "Using technology to control the feeling of loss is kind of interesting. Like can technology ease grief or loneliness? ... I feel like technology sort of increases the feeling of loneliness."
