The Cover-up — The Shrouds
I’ve always been kind of fascinated with the concept of grief. That might sound a bit morbid, or like a leftover from an emo kid’s journal, but it’s true. How people deal with loss, setbacks, or whatever form of sadness, and find a way to carry on, is something that innately intrigues me, probably because when I’ve had particularly down phases in my own life, I’ve had trouble sorting it all out. There’s always a calculus as to whether I should be strong and push it all down, or if I should let it all out and scream into the proverbial void. Is there a happy medium within that misery? I don’t know, but I’ll spend the rest of my days seeking some form of answer.
It was this curiosity that led me to prioritize The Shrouds back in October during AFI Fest. I would have been interested just on the fact that it’s a David Cronenberg movie, but the personal nature of this latest work — now in wide release — is what drove me to put it at the top of my list. A somewhat autobiographical look at the grieving process, Cronenberg puts his own philosophies to the test by giving the viewer a literal manifestation of loss and examining what it means to truly let go.
The genesis for the film comes from the fact that Cronenberg’s wife of 43 years, Carolyn, passed away in 2017 after a bout with cancer. Straddling the line between materialism and atheism in his personal life, the filmmaker, as he is wont to do, asked the question of how he’s supposed to mourn when he doesn’t believe in any deities or afterlife. He answers, to a degree, via his avatar in this project, Karsh, played excellently by Vincent Cassel, who has come up with a novel business to serve that exact purpose. Using highly technical burial shrouds filled with sensors and miniature cameras, Karsh has developed GraveTech, specialized cemeteries where the loved ones of those now gone can view a 3D image of the deceased decomposing underground. It sounds ghastly at first, and clearly it would not be an ideal arrangement but for a very small sector of the population, but there is beauty in it. People often say that we are born from earth, and to earth we shall return, a turn that is itself paraphrased from the Book of Genesis, so Karsh provides an opportunity to see that very return in real time, an odd — and very Cronenbergian — sense of comfort that acknowledges religious roots without outright endorsing them.
In the actual story, it’s been several years since Karsh lost the love of his life, Becca, played by Diane Kruger as part of a three-pronged performance. Cancer took her bit by bit, figuratively and literally. Those that are looking for Cronenberg’s trademark body horror may be a bit disappointed, but Karsh’s nightmares of a progressively deteriorating and amputated Becca will sate that particular desire. Karsh is also an atheist, and because of it can’t bring himself to think of his late wife in more ethereal terms, and certainly not in a way that’s separate from his own being. He wants, needs, to still be with her, and this idea of broadcasting burial shrouds was the closest he could come. He seeks companionship, and has a deep desire to move on, but he’s hamstrung by his cavalier attitude towards death and the lingering feeling that he hasn’t done enough to satisfy Becca’s memory.
It also doesn’t help that he’s beset on all sides by painful reminders and real-world obstacles. As he tries to expand his business into Europe, more and more naturalist outfits lobby to have GraveTech banned from their respective countries, seeing his work as a grotesque perversion. Closer to home, Karsh has to settle his unresolved feelings while maintaining a friendship with Becca’s twin sister Terry (Kruger #2), and his main tech developer Maury (Guy Pearce), who also happens to be Terry’s ex-husband with a bit of a jealous streak. Karsh’s only comfort is his AI digital assistant Hunny (Kruger #3), designed by Maury to resemble Becca flawlessly.
Karsh goes through the daily motions, meeting with clients, checking in on tech development, visiting Becca’s grave (he plans to be buried beside her in his own shroud one day), and occasionally trying to put himself back out there into the dating world, but he’s clearly in a rut because he still can’t cope with the permanence of Becca’s passing. The film opens with a fantastic scene where Karsh is at his dentist, being warned against his teeth grinding due to stress and depression, a great metaphor for all that is to come. Things are thrown into disarray, however, when he’s alerted to an act of vandalism at the graveyard. Several tombstones have been defaced or destroyed, including Becca’s, and the tech itself has been encrypted, with Maury locked out and unable to restore it.
The mystery behind this sabotage ends up being what drives Karsh to finally deal with things, because there’s more at stake than just his hang-ups. As he tries to figuratively rebuild his damaged psyche, he must also physically rebuild his product. This leads to alternating scenes of dark humor, sexuality, light humor, frustration, hope, and nightmare fuel. When he meets Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt), the ironically blind trophy wife of an elderly Hungarian man who wants his own GraveTech site upon his passing, the plot becomes much more about finding clarity than reconciling lost love.
For what the film is trying to accomplish, it really shines thanks to two key elements. The first is the cast. I’ve already mentioned Cassel doing a great job, but Kruger is also phenomenal, especially since she’s playing three distinct parts. The frail Becca is definitely not the same as her flirty computerized counterpart, and they’re both a far cry from the assertive and kinky Terry, who gets increasingly turned on by the conspiracy theories surrounding Karsh’s investigation. As for Pearce, he may have gotten an Oscar nomination for The Brutalist, and deservedly so, but this is honestly my favorite performance of his. He’s so insecure and batty while also being observant and brilliant that even when his story arc takes some predictable turns, you’re still fully invested in how he sells the moment.
The second is in how real Cronenberg makes all this feel, despite it being absurd and potentially off-putting. As I mentioned, while I certainly wouldn’t want a GraveTech burial, and I’m sure millions upon millions wouldn’t either, I do see a twisted sort of logic behind it. It goes back to what I said in the opening about my curiosity regarding grief. I’d honestly like to meet someone who would opt for this, either for themselves or their loved ones, and get into the thought process behind it. There’s something much deeper than the six feet of ground separating the living from the dead that would go into that, and I’d love to know what that is. Cronenberg is expert at making you look at macabre things like this from vastly different angles, challenging your initial gut reactions.
But even in the smaller moments, you believe the journey that Karsh and the others are going through. You can understand any number of motivations and suspects for the attack on the cemetery. You get Maury’s paranoia, even if it’s overblown at times. You feel Soo-Min’s gentle nature and need for genuine affection rather than one of financial convenience. Hell, I’ll just say it, Hunny is very alluring in her own way, as is Becca, even when significant parts of her body are gone. It’s because Cronenberg — and Cassel to a large extent — make you see the love that Karsh had for his wife, and in doing so, we can feel it as well. You can recognize that emotional beauty in a soul rather than a physical appearance, even if you don’t necessarily believe in the existence of a metaphysical spirit.
In doing this, Cronenberg expertly shifts the essence of his central theme of moving on. Instead of it being about how one processes their grief so that they can resume a sense of normalcy, it becomes more about admitting that you’ve done enough, that you’ve met whatever societal, ethical, or moral obligations you think you might have had to the deceased, and finally allowing yourself to let go. There are points where the investigation becomes intentionally ridiculous and outright silly, which may seem like a lack of narrative discipline in the moment, but the more I dwelt on it, the more I realized that this was Cronenberg’s — and by extension the in-movie universe’s — way of telling Karsh that he can just wash his hands of it. What starts as his problem, partly through external pain and partly self-inflicted, becomes gradually less and less so, a “That’ll do, pig” for the widower.
In true Cronenberg fashion, a lot is left up to your imagination and interpretation, with a few key details frustratingly left vague and ambiguously open-ended. But just like with the graphic depictions of viscera (which are extremely toned down here), you have to know that it just comes with the territory at this point. This is one of his more cerebral features, one grounded much more in emotional science fiction storytelling than horror, and where it really counts, he delivers. I have my own wonders about what lies beyond this life, questions and hopes more so than beliefs, and it helps to dive into the implications of that from time to time. If nothing else, The Shrouds is essential viewing just for that thought experiment.
Grade: A-
Join the conversation in the comments below! What film should I review next? When do you know that you’ve grieved enough? Would you ever consider a similar burial situation? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!
Originally published at http://actuallypaid.com on May 7, 2025.
