I don’t know who Maggie Gyllenhaal is aiming to please with her messy, dynamic, campy, musical monster movie, The Bride!, but her shot hit me square in the chest. A sortof quasi-sequel slash complete reimagining, the film is at times a Jazz Age gangster flick, a Bonnie and Clyde-style crime movie, a feminist manifesto, and a romance between two “reinvigorated” creatures who are quite literally made for one another. Gyllenhaal, who has been grappling with issues of sexual violence and odd kinks since her 2002 breakout, Secretary, has built a film with more than its share of misfires, but so what? The unapologetic nature of it, and the pulsating energy of the lead performances by Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, make it the type of experience Hollywood could use more of.
The Bride! isn’t a remake, so don’t get it twisted. It’s more like Gyllenhaal, who directed and wrote the screenplay, had a million different ideas for her next movie (following 2021’s excellent The Lost Daughter), and she threw them all into a horror movie and stirred. We know right away that we’re in for quite the over-the-top experience when deceased author Mary Shelley herself shows up, talking like a foul-mouthed flapper, and somehow inserts herself into the mind of an escort (both played by Buckley) in 1930s Chicago. This drives the woman, who we learn is named Ida, into hysterics, launching accusations against the local crimelord. Within minutes, Ida would be dead, but that’s only a temporary condition.
Bale enters the picture as Frankenstein’s monster, who, after a hundred years of loneliness, approaches mad scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening, chomping scenery like a boss) with a request that she create him a mate. It takes some convincing. Even with all the wackiness at foot, Euphronius knows how crazy it sounds to bring someone back from the dead. Still, she goes through with it, and soon Ida is reborn to walk the Earth by Frank’s side.
But is that really what she wants? The Bride! doesn’t just give her over to Frank to be his companion. He has to work for it. Lying to her that she died from an “accident” and that they were due to be married, Frank breaks her out of the lab to see the world. However, they are indeed monsters, and death follows in their wake. Not only that, but the Bride finds herself the target of toxic men looking to force themselves on her, even though she’d rather not. It seems guys have always treated women like pieces of meat, even those who are literally reanimated corpses.
The Bride! goes to some bizarre places, and the weirder it gets, the better. Frank is a true movie-holic, and is obsessed with the works of Fred Astaire-esque actor, Ronnie Reed, played in a fun performance by Jake Gyllenhaal. On the run from detectives (Penelope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard), Frank and the Bride hit up every town showing Reed’s movies. They also occasionally bust up swanky parties and have dance-offs. Seriously.
Buckley, who is the easy frontrunner to take Best Actress for her performance in Hamnet, goes places you’d never expect her to go in The Bride! It’s a role that asks her to sell quite a lot to the audience, from vigorous monster sex to wild fits of profanity, howling like an animal whenever Shelley takes over the Bride’s mind. To Buckley’s credit, she takes all of the strange foibles in stride, evolving the character in a similar way that Emma Stone did her Frankenstein riff in Poor Things. By her side is Bale, whose soulful performance as Frank gives way to intense rage and extreme brutality when someone dares get in his Bride’s way.
Later, the Bride’s crime spree begins influencing other women to dress like her and to commit acts of violence on their own. She and Frank become antiheroes running from the law, and it’s a cool idea to show how these two monsters are impacting a society that will only grow more monstrous in the years to come. But Gyllenhaal doesn’t give this idea nearly enough time to flesh out. There’s simply too much going on.
I can promise you that The Bride! is going to be divisive. Some, like myself, are going to love Gyllenhaal’s ambition, her visual flair (aided by DP Lawrence Sher), and the bold performances by Buckley and Bale. If you ask me, Gyllenhaal has dug up and breathed life into a film that dares to be fearless when so many others are content to play it safe.
The Bride! opens in theaters on March 6th from Warner Bros.
