Looking for a good time at the movies? Sorry, we’re fresh out. The best I can do is a meditation on death, grief, and mortality from cerebral Canadian auteur, David Cronenberg. Look, it’s an acquired taste…
How to watch The Shrouds in New Zealand
The Shrouds is in New Zealand cinemas from August 28, 2025.
What is The Shrouds about?
A few years down the track from his wife Becca’s painful and protracted death, Karsh runs a company called GraveTech, which allows grievers to view a live 3D image of their deceased loved ones’ rotting corpse. Hey, everyone’s journey of grief is different, right? He’s also close friends with his wife’s twin sister, Becca, and has an AI assistant, Hunny, modeled on his late spouse, because Cronenberg loves a doppelganger.
Things get weird—well, weirder—when someone starts sabotaging GraveTech, vandalising their high tech headstones and hacking their digital network. So on top of the Cronenbergian preoccupations with corporality and mortality, the doppelganger thing, and a dash of weird sex (Karsh is having an affair with the blind wife of a CEO) we have a bit of corporate espionage, plus a general dystopian tone born out of the intrusion of capitalism into the realm of the final mystery. Yep, that’s our Dave.
The cast of The Shrouds
Vincent Cassel is Karsh; Diane Kruger pulls triple duty as Becca, Terry, and Hunny; Guy Pearce is Maury; Sandrine Holt is Soo-Min Szabo, the previously mentioned blind side piece; Elizabeth Saunders is Gray Foner; Jennifer Dale is Myrna Slotnik; Eric Weinthal is Dr. Hofstra; Steve Switzman is Dr. Jerry Eckler; and Jeff Yung is Dr. Rory Zhao.
The Shrouds trailer
Why we’re excited about The Shrouds
Honestly, this sounds like classic Cronenberg. Hell, the synopsis sounds like an early ’90s Cronenberg that somehow flew under your radar until now. We joked that he’s a bit of an acquired taste, but he’s also the best chef to ever work in this particular cuisine, if we can stretch a metaphor past breaking point.
