Rent The Shrouds (2024)

Grief, Glitches and the Ghosts We Carry - The Shrouds review by griggs

The Shrouds is a strange, thoughtful film—one that lingers long after it ends. Cronenberg has crafted something dense with ideas, rooted in grief and death—subjects we don't talk about nearly enough. We spend so much time trying to live well, yet we rarely ask what it means to die well, or lose someone well. Films like this matter because they create space for that conversation.

The tone is subdued throughout. Vincent Cassel, playing a grieving tech entrepreneur Karsh, gives a deliberately flat performance that mirrors the numbness of mourning. Anyone who's lived through grief and depression will recognise the fog Karsh is wading through—the slow, soupy sense of time, the absence of energy or feeling.

Beneath the surface, the film explores how we memorialise the dead, how technology reshapes our most intimate experiences, and whether capitalism can ever make peace with mortality. The conspiracy thread taps into all of this: vandalised graves, hacked livestreams, and suspicions of corporate or geopolitical sabotage. These ideas may sound far-fetched, but they feel plausible. In Cronenberg's hands, conspiracy becomes a symptom of grief—irrational, desperate, and strangely credible.

It's not perfect, but it's gripping in its own quiet way—and well worth the emotional excavation.