Movie Recommendation: The Shrouds

Dir. David Cronenberg, 2025

I don't watch movies with the mindset of providing a critical review or seeking movies to write about. Rather these recommendation posts reflect moments I finished watching a movie and felt driven to tell the world about it!

I only recommend movies I loved watching and am eager for you to see.

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Okay, first note is that this is a great fuckin’ poster, credit to the designer. Though this high res, non-cropped version I found online is the Italian version, it matches the US version I saw outside the theatre I went to see it. The problem is the US / English versions of the poster I see online are either cropped or low resolution.

That said, hi, hello, how’s it going? I am going to admit that I’ve been seeing plenty of recommendable movies, but I have a hard time finding the time to write the actual Movie Recommendation posts. Right now I’m working on the VFX and sound for Shroomery and starting something I call the Vinyl Horror Story Project, as well as have a long-term family project I’m working on and my usual lifestyle and workaday life.

I bring that up because Movie Recommendations launched, essentially, with Cronenberg’s previous movie, Crimes of the Future. And I don’t want to make it seem like I’m just ignoring all these great releases that are coming out and then pimping my boy David, it’s just that they’re so damn good.

Furthermore, my excitement about Crimes of the Future was largely about his return to body horror after a period of delving into psychological and philosophical drama; my excitement for The Shrouds is that it’s unlike any movie David Cronenberg has made before:

He’s re-invented the corporate espionage thriller.

The story follow Karsh (Vincent Cassel), an industrial video producer, who after his wife’s death has founded a company that interns people into grave shrouds that enable their loved ones who surveil their bodies from the grave marker, now a form of interactive kiosk, to watch the process of their decomposition. But as strange marks show up on Karsh’s wife’s bones, and later as his graveyard is vandalized, Karsh becomes paranoid that someone is trying to undermine his company — and may want something from his wife.

Paranoia here is the pivot point that drives the narrative — and keeps your heart beating uncomfortably quickly. Karsh, Karsh’s sister-in-law Becca (Diane Kruger), and Maury (Guy Pearce), her ex-husband and Karsh’s infosec contractor, are all dealing with grief — and their trauma all comes out as various forms of paranoia. Maury, paid to be paranoid about electronics, nevertheless is more animatedly interested in Becca and Karsh’s in-law relationship. Becca, on the other hand, indulges and is even excited by the paranoia that the death of her sister has delivered her.

Meanwhile Karsh is involved with an AI assistant named Honey (also voiced by Diane Kruger), a burgeoning relationship with a potential client named Soo Min, and his dead-wife’s former doctor Zhao, all of whose agendas seem opaque and concerning to him even as he increasingly relies on their guidance and support. The localized paranoia grows until it seems like Karsh may have gotten into something bigger than he can imagine. Did the Russians do it? The Chinese? Was his wife the subject of weird medical experiments?

Right, so. Plot-wise you’re enveloped in this whodunnit as Karsh navigates around Toronto in his Tesla trying to recover his wife’s body from some sort of hack. Vibe-wise you’re in Cronenberg-land and all uncomfortable body horror and weird sex that entails. Theme-wise you’re into something interesting about grief.

Namely, grief’s anger and selfishness.

If I were to sum up Cronenberg’s general idea, it’s that [topic of the movie] causes the body and brain to change, usually in violent and irreparable ways. In this case the grievers almost literally cling to bodies of their lost ones, jealously refusing others’ use or relationship to them.

Guy Pearce gets MVP spotlight on this one. Everyone does well, but Pearce’s Maury is a horror movie unto himself. A weirdly relatable and familiar computer nerd with hostile neighbor vibes. The guy at work who tells you he’s doing alright but the way he holds himself makes you want to check his browser history for firearm purchases. When he looks at whatever task he’s doing, he’s locked in on you. When he looks at a character in the face, you feel the simmering loathing.

I never wrote a Movie Recommendation for The Brutalist, but Pearce is just killing it lately. These two roles alone shove him to the top of my favorite actors list.

I say above that The Shrouds is unlike Cronenberg’s other movies. It’s not unlike his book Consumed, which apparently he’s redeveloping the script for. I like to think that Cronenberg has a lot of technothriller concepts bouncing around his head he’s trying to get off the ground before he’s covered in his own burial shroud.

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Read more of my Movie Recommendations here:

Movie Recommendations: 3 Wordless Features