Drawing on his response to his wife’s death, David Cronenberg fashions a deeply personal meditation on loss, longing and grief, filtered through a necro-techno body-horror lens.

In desperate mourning for his dead wife, tech magnate Karsh invents a shroud that lets people live-stream, in 8K resolution, their deceased loved ones’ decaying remains. Keeping watch over his decomposing beloved from the cemetery-adjacent restaurant – and date spot! – that he owns, Karsh starts noticing strange growths on her bones. Soon after, her grave and several others are desecrated, and he’s embroiled in an expanding mystery/conspiracy that may or may not involve Chinese spies, eco-terrorism and medical malpractice.

As Karsh, Vincent Cassel is a dead-ringer proxy for Cronenberg, underscoring the film’s autobiographical nature – as far as that is possible in an elegiac dystopian biotech-thriller. Diane Kruger gives three full-throttle performances: as Karsh’s dead wife, as her alive twin sister and as an AI assistant that might be messing with Karsh’s mind. Guy Pearce (who also appears in Inside, MIFF 2024) joins the cast as Karsh’s paranoid hacker ex-brother-in-law, hamming it up with aplomb. With costumes designed by Yves Saint Laurent – also producing here – The Shrouds looks suitably sharp and is sure to satisfy Cronenberg completists and cinephiles alike.

“A brilliantly cerebral thriller about the physicality of grief ... Subtle but enormously rewarding.” – IndieWire

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