Promotional material for "The Bride!" By Luke Del Rosario
Hollywood seems to be obsessed with the Frankenstein story lately. First, with Yorgos Lanthimos’ sexual, hyper-stylized ‘Poor Things’ in 2023, then Guillermo del Toro’s somber ‘Frankenstein’adaptation last Fall, and now Maggie Gyllenhaal’s meta, energetic tale of self-discovery in ‘The Bride!’ hits theaters.
After a century of artificial life, Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale), who calls himself Frank for short, finds himself deeply lonely and desperate for a relationship, something his hideous appearance has made difficult to find. So he travels to 1936 Chicago in ask mad scientist Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to create a companion for him. The two revive a murdered young woman and The Bride (Jessie Buckley) is born. What ensues is beyond what either of them could have imagined.
The film opens with a bold narrative conceit involving Mary Shelley herself, author of the original 1818 Frankenstein novel. This reframes the story as something more mythic and self-aware than a traditional sequel. This immediately sets the tone for the type of film you are getting into, one that doesn’t fit into the mold of the stereotypical Hollywood blockbuster.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s direction gives it this raucous, feminist energy that cannot be ignored. The film moves with an unrelenting pace and with every turn the narrative took I was more engaged.
I’m frankly surprised that Warner Bros. greenlit this, giving Gyllenhaal a budget of eighty million dollars, simply because of how audacious it is. ‘The Bride!’ is wild, it’s surprising, and as strange as certain aspects of this film are, they only made me more intrigued as to how it would all come together. Disappointingly, it doesn’t.
The movie is all over the place. I find it apt that it’s about a monster who is sewn together from different parts because that’s how the movie itself feels. It’s trying to be so many different things at once. It’s ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ meets ‘Bonnie and Clyde.’ It’s an unstable romance. It’s a crime thriller. It’s feminist horror. Sometimes it’s also a musical. The film could have benefited from some restraint. It introduces all of these ideas and touches on many different themes, but none of them land with the weight that the film promises.
The characters are devastatingly one-note. The film always feels like it’s so close to digging deeper into the complexity of their conflict before it backs away and moves to the next scene. Thisespecially applies to two detectives, played by Penélope Cruz and Peter Sarsgaard, who are involved in a sideplot that never feels earned.
The most interesting of the cast of characters is the titular one: the bride herself. Jessie Buckley actually plays two different characters (one of them I didn’t even realize was her until after the film ended) and they both feel distinct. She embodies the bride’s confusion so well throughout as she discovers the person she wants to be. Her performance shifts between vulnerability and feminist rage, interrupted by moments of eerie possession, and the versatility she displays through those shifts is a marvel to watch.
Christian Bale’s Frank is the cause of this combustible romance and his deep desire for connection can be felt through the screen. After over a hundred years of keeping to himself, he really doesn’t know how to talk to people. That awkwardness contrasts with the wonder and care that he shows for the bride. At the same time, Bale’s performance can feel so over-the-top to the pointwhere I struggle to take the character seriously and I lose my immersion.
But that doesn’t happen often throughout the runtime. For most of the film, I’m strapped in, following the bonkers ride Maggie Gyllenhaal has crafted. Despite its flaws, “The Bride!” is wildly entertaining. It’s refreshing to see a studio produce something so strange, and I hope audiences encourage more unique, out-of-the-box filmmaking like this. Even with all its thin script and scattershot approach to its themes, this bold, weird genre experiment is definitely a memorable entry in the Frankenstein canon.
