Rating: R | Runtime: 120 minutes
Release Date: April 18th, 2025 (USA) / April 25th, 2025 (Canada)
Studio: Sphere Films / Janus Films / Sideshow
Director(s): David Cronenberg
Writer(s): David Cronenberg

Grief is rotting your teeth.

Best blind date in cinematic history? Jennifer Dale’s curiosity when agreeing to see the grave of Vincent Cassel’s late wife (the plot where he too will one day be buried) was great in its own right. Seeing her face when he reveals, without warning, that the headstone screens she assumed would show family photos were actually a live feed of the carcass was brilliant. What an insanely psychopathic move.

Unfortunately, the rest of The Shrouds proved to be a real cinematic clunker for me. I’m a big David Cronenberg fan and I appreciate how personal this film is to his own grief after losing his wife, but it unfolds like an amateur stage play wherein he purposefully asked his cast to deliver large swaths of exposition-heavy dialogue, technobabble, and lustful desire as though they were reading the instruction manual for a washing machine.

Add the constant conspiracies revealing coincidences which in turn spark more conspiracies and I found myself completely removed from the action since none of it went anywhere. Nowhere that didn’t cause me to wonder if the whole thing was a delusional dream of a broken man. But Cronenberg simply plays it all straight, bleeding nightmare and reality together in a way that erases both. It’s a puzzle intentionally built without a solution. Instead of providing intrigue, however, it felt like a complete waste of time.

The whole thing being a giant Tesla commercial didn’t help its cause either.

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Diane Kruger and Vincent Cassel in THE SHROUDS; courtesy of Janus Films.