The Bride! Review: Maggie Gyllenhaal's Beautiful, Messy Monster Movie Is An Unhinged Delight

Here comes "The Bride!", Maggie Gyllenhaal's extremely messy, extremely inventive film that dares you to try to neatly fit it into one genre. It's a sort-of-musical, meta-sequel-reboot, comedy, love story, gangster movie, and overall monster mash. It's clunky, and strange, and beautiful. Not everything here works, but Gyllenhaal and her team have gone to such great lengths to craft something unique that it's easy to go along for the ride. Some scenes will make you cringe, others will make you guffaw. It's all part of the experience. Full of bold visuals, brutal violence, and references to all sorts of "Frankenstein" movies including, believe it or not, "Young Frankenstein," "The Bride!" is the type of movie you love both because of and despite its flaws. Even if I didn't enjoy everything going on here, I'll happily take more studio fare this unapologetically irreverent and unhinged over standard paint-by-numbers slop.

Gyllenhaal, who also wrote the script, is riffing on 1935's "Bride of Frankenstein," but she has a lot more on her mind. This isn't really a remake of that film (especially since that's a Universal title and this comes from Warner Bros., which recently decided to sell itself to Paramount after considering Netflix). It's more like a fever-dream someone had after watching "Bride of Frankenstein" half-delirious and hopped-up on expired Robitussin. "The Bride!" wants you to know this isn't a normal take on the material right from the jump, as it features opening narration from none other than "Frankenstein" author herself Mary Shelley — from beyond the grave! Also, for reasons only Gyllenhaal can understand, this Mary Shelley talks and acts like a foul-mouthed cabaret Master of Ceremonies, telling groan-worthy jokes and then cackling at them before you have a chance to really react. It's weird, wild stuff.

After introducing herself, the ghost of Mary Shelley goes ahead and possesses Ida (also played by Jessie Buckley), a fast-talking dame living in 1930s Chicago. Before the title card slams home, Ida will end up dead — but her story is just beginning. Soon, the Frankenstein monster, lovingly nicknamed Frank, shows up in Chicago and asks mad scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening, understanding the assignment) to create him a mate. Frank, played with soulful rage by Christian Bale buried in convincing makeup, is a sad, lonely monster who wants companionship. He's been wandering around alone since Dr. Frankenstein cobbled him together in the 1800s, and the only comfort he's found over the years is by watching the many Hollywood movies starring song-and-dance man Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal, having fun with a small role).

Before you know it, Ida has been resurrected as The Bride ... and she's still possessed by Mary Shelley, too. Buckley is a great actor, and as I sit writing this review, she's probably only days away from winning a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar for her devastating work in "Hamnet." Her work in "The Bride!", however, is so big, so broad, so saddled with tics and and shrieks that it takes a little while to warm up to it. Whenever Mary takes control of the Bride's body, she slips into a thick accent, hurling stream-of-consciousness profanities, and I have to be honest: It got real old, real fast. Thankfully, this concept eventually fades into the background, allowing Buckley to feel more like a real character and less like a series of quirky constructs.

Frank is immediately smitten with the Bride, but she's not so sure about him. It doesn't help matters that Frank and Dr. Euphronious tell this newly resurrected a corpse a big lie: She was in an "accident" that wiped out her memory, a convenient fabrication that allows Frank to claim he and the Bride are already engaged to be married after embarking on a love affair the Bride can't recall. The two monsters soon find themselves on the run, hopping from one big city to the next and getting in all sorts of swooning, romantic, violent trouble like an undead Bonnie and Clyde.

Gyllenhaal and cinematographer Lawrence Sher go absolutely bananas with all of this, turning one scene after another into a big, weird set piece where logic need not apply (and why should it? This is a movie about reanimated corpses). Frank, a true cinephile, takes the Bride to the movies often, and the two will inexplicably see themselves up on the screen of the film they're watching. Later, they crash a big party and somehow inspire everyone around them to break out into an elaborate dance routine (this is the best scene in the entire film, as the choreography is just jaw-dropping to behold).

At some point, the Bride's antics start inspiring women across the country to take up arms and become revolutionaries against a misogynist society that treats them with scorn and violence, and it's here where "The Bride!" gets a little lost. Gyllenhaal doesn't flesh this revolution idea out enough, and it feels tossed-off to the point where the film probably would've worked better without it. I get what she's going for here, and I wish it worked better.

Speaking of things that don't quite work, something that should've ended up on the cutting room floor is a narrative-dragging subplot about two Chicago detectives trying to catch Frank and the Bride. Technically, only one of these characters, Jake (played by Peter Sarsgaard) is a detective. Accompanying him is Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), his plucky partner he passes off as his secretary but who is clearly the brains of the operation. Of course, since this is the 1930s, the idea of a lady detective is ludicrous — a fact the characters point out multiple times in on-the-nose dialogue. Sarsgaard and Cruz are both talented performers, but "The Bride!" slams to an unfortunate halt whenever the story cuts to their characters. Like the Bride-inspiring-revolution angle, this storyline feels undercooked; a holdover from an early draft of the script that should've been finessed or removed as the overall story began to take shape.

These issues cannot be ignored, and they legitimately hinder the film on multiple occasions. And yet, "The Bride!" has such wild punk rock energy that you can forgive the flaws. While the script doesn't quite make its revolution angle work, Buckley's take on how the Bride seems to be omnisciently aware of the specific, horrible things men do to women is raw and powerful; you feel the rage building up inside her as the film ticks along.

Using the framework of territory as well-worn as "Bride of Frankenstein" (which, to be fair, was pretty subversive for its time) to launch such a visually sumptuous, unapologetically bold story of love, graphic violence, and rage has to count for something. At a time when movie studios taking big risks and big swings feels more unlikely than ever, "The Bride!" is willing to charge headfirst into intentional audacity. 

It's a bit of a mess, but it's a beautiful mess.

/Film Rating: 8 out of 10

"The Bride!" opens in theaters on March 6, 2026.