At The Movies: The Shrouds

Would you want to be able to see a departed loved-one as they slowly deteriorate and decompose in their grave? Well, that is the concept developed in The Shrouds.

French legend Vincent Cassell plays the very calm role of Karsh, an industrial tech developer. He has invented shrouds for corpses that allows family to view the deceased in perfect 3D via a dedicated and encrypted app on their phone. The idea came to fruition after the passing of his beloved wife, Becca, from cancer – he wanted to be as close to her in death as he was in life. When viewing Becca’s corpse, Karsh becomes concerned about some apparent growths on her bones.

He seeks the opinion of Becca’s veterinarian sister Terry who suspects something much more sinister than growths caused by the cancer. In what is a bit of a tangled web, Diane Kruger has a triple role as Terry, Karsh’s wife Becca and Karsh’s AI assistant Honey. As it turns out, Terry was also married to Karsh’s brother Maury (Guy Pearce)!

When Karsh receives a video of his GraveTech cemetery being vandalised and their encrypted file server hacked and blocked, he calls on his tech-guru brother to help solve the problem and restore the servers. Maury initially set the system up but is horrified to learn the Karsh outsourced the final setup to a tech company from China. Karsh’s dream of expanding his Shrouds concept to other countries looks to be in jeopardy, as he struggles to determine a reason for the sabotage and the unusual bone growths on Becca’s body.

A fascinating concept with some interesting outcomes. It’s worth a visit to the cinema for this one – though I don’t think I would take up the offer to watch loved ones as they progressively decompose!

Movie Review by John Glennie

Rating: MA 15+
Runtime: 120 minutes