‘The Bride!’ Review: Jessie Buckley Breathes Life into a Monstrous Mess

In The Bride!, Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale portray a couple of uniquely created killers. The film is a daring reimagining of the 1935 classic The Bride of Frankenstein, where the original bride had a very limited role and didn’t speak. Director and writer Maggie Gyllenhaal gives her bride a powerful voice to discuss how society limits women and denies them independence. However, Gyllenhaal explores these themes from so many different viewpoints that the movie sometimes feels chaotic.

Jessie Buckley’s powerful performance is the main reason this ambitious, though somewhat chaotic, film manages to work. While her character, the bride, represents the movie’s ideas more than a fully realized person, we root for her because of the intense anger she feels at being resurrected simply to satisfy a man. That man, Frankenstein’s monster, played brilliantly by Bale, is more relatable and evokes our sympathy through his clearer emotional journey. Though this unconventional couple doesn’t quite deliver the feminist statement the film aims for, director Gyllenhaal deserves praise for taking such a bold risk with creativity, especially at a time when most studios play it safe. Even if the film doesn’t fully succeed, the attempt is admirable.

Jake Gyllenhaal previously directed the well-received psychological thriller The Lost Daughter in 2021. His new film, The Bride!, is a stark contrast, embracing a much more flamboyant style. Unfortunately, this often overshadows the film’s underlying themes, which get lost amidst the modern soundtrack, elaborate dance sequences, and complicated storyline. It’s a missed opportunity, as the story of the bride itself could have been a powerful way to explore the ideas Gyllenhaal aims to present.

Warner Bros.

Before becoming the bride we see later, Ida Buckley is a vibrant but vulnerable woman in 1930s Chicago. She’s used and abused by gangsters while working at a high-end restaurant. According to the story, speaking her mind as a woman carries a deadly price, and she tragically falls to her death down a staircase shortly after asserting herself.

It would be simple to portray Frankenstein’s monster – nicknamed Frank, and refreshingly free of the character’s typical heavy makeup – as just another obstacle to a woman’s happiness. He often is that, but the story makes you feel sorry for him. Frank is a lonely, century-old creature who’s fading away, and his idea of love – something innocent and simple – comes from the old movie musicals he loves, especially those starring his favorite performer, Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal). When Frank arrives at the Chicago office of scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), he’s desperate for love, even though his understanding of it is naive and he doesn’t consider what the woman might want. Dr. Euphronious is initially reluctant, but she agrees to create a bride for him, and together they go to a graveyard to find a recently deceased woman wearing a burnt orange dress.

Warner Bros.

Once Frank and the bride flee into the vibrant, 1930s settings of Chicago and New York, actor Jake Gyllenhaal delivers a captivating performance. The film is visually stunning, thanks to the work of production designer Karen Murphy and cinematographer Lawrence Sher (known for his work on Joker, another film exploring underlying cultural tensions). They immerse the viewer in a rich color palette, drawing inspiration from various genres—film noir, classic musicals (with a playful reference to Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein), road movies about couples on the run, and even the energy of rave culture. This creates a sense of unrestrained energy, mirroring the bride’s journey toward spiritual liberation.

As a movie fan, what frustrated me about The Bride! was how it kept pulling back to show the big picture when I wanted to stay focused on the main character. It felt like director Paul Gyllenhaal was trying to explore too many ideas at once, using a bunch of different characters, which honestly slowed things down. It’s really noticeable after Frank saves the bride from an attack – suddenly we’re dealing with detectives Jake and Myrna, and the movie starts highlighting all these little ways men dismiss Myrna. A cop calls her ‘lady detective,’ offers Jake a cigarette but not her, and Jake doesn’t even promise she’ll get credit for her work. It’s like everyone’s playing along with these unspoken rules, even Dr. Euphronious, who hides her gender by only publishing with her initial. It just felt…complicated when I wanted a more direct story.

Warner Bros.

The movie gets more solid when Frank and Penelope, the bride, become beloved figures as they run from both the police and the mob, who reappear late in the plot to complicate things further. This leads to them inspiring a feminist movement similar to the protests in Joker, with women committing similar crimes and chanting the strange, unexplained phrase “brain attack.” Gyllenhaal’s character seems overly eager in pursuing this ambitious goal.

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The film The Bride! begins with an introduction to Mary Shelley, played by Buckley, who describes the story of Frankenstein as a troubling idea she wants to escape. The film suggests this ‘disease’ represents the ways men hinder women’s independence. While this seems to have been director Gyllenhaal’s initial idea, instead of focusing on a conflict between Buckley’s powerful performance and Bale’s earnestness, she crafted a visually stunning and energetic movie—a bit chaotic, but never dull—that feels like its own monstrous creation.

2026-03-04 23:08

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