The Bride! Review
A monster finds her voice in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!
(L-R) Christian Bale as Frank and Jessie Buckley as the Bride in The Bride! Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! is an electrifying spin on James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein, reimagining the classic monster story as something far more defiant: a tale about who gets to tell their own story. This is her second feature after her well-regarded debut, The Lost Daughter (2021). The film stars Jessie Buckley as the titular Bride, with Christian Bale as Frankenstein’s monster, Frank.
Frank (Christian Bale) travels to 1930s Chicago to seek out the transgressive scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), believing she has the knowledge to create a companion for him, another resurrected being who might finally cure his crushing loneliness. After some convincing, they exhume Ida (Jessie Buckley), a recently murdered woman, and bring her back to life as Frank’s Bride. But the new creation refuses to remain the passive partner Frank imagined. After a violent incident at a nightclub leaves two men dead, the pair go on the run across the country, pursued by detectives Myrna Mallow (Penelope Cruz) and Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard). With no memories of her former life, the Bride struggles to define who she is, even as intrusive thoughts from their ultimate creator, Mary Shelley (also Buckley), push her toward claiming a voice and a story of her own.
Jessie Buckley as the Bride in The Bride! Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
(L-R) Peter Sarsgaard as Jake Wiles and Penelope Cruz as Myrna Mallow in The Bride! Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
In the film’s world, women are rarely allowed a voice. Frank is surprised to learn that Dr. Euphronious is a woman. Myrna Mallow works as a detective but must pose as Jake Wiles’ secretary, solving cases he receives credit for. The Bride stands in defiance of that silence, pushed forward by the angry ghost of Mary Shelley, another woman whose voice history tried to diminish. For years, some critics suggested that Shelley’s husband, Percy, must have co-written Frankenstein, as though an 18-year-old woman could not possibly have created such a work alone. Gyllenhaal’s film imagines Shelley refusing that erasure entirely. She should be angry.
Unlike the original Bride, this one isn’t passive. She has desires, a voice, and a will of her own; she isn’t just a vehicle for Frank’s growth or a prop in his tale. She’s haunted not only by Mary Shelley’s insistence that she tell her own story, but also by the murdered young women whose tongues were cut out by mob boss Lupino (Zlatko Buric) to silence them. Like the best Frankenstein stories, the film ultimately asks who the real monsters are.
Jessie Buckley as the Bride in The Bride! Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
The movie also draws on the allure of old Hollywood. Frank obsessively watches the films of actor Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), a Fred Astaire–like singing and dancing leading man. He finds hope in the movies, imagining himself as Reed, who survived polio and dances despite one leg being longer than the other, a condition Frank equates with his own body. This obsession fuels some of the film’s best sequences, placing Frank inside the movies in his imagination and culminating in a fantastic dance number after his ultimately disappointing meeting with Reed.
At the heart of the film is the romance between the Bride and Frank. They tear through the country like Bonnie and Clyde—another clear cinematic influence—leaving chaos in their wake as they forge love through their shared experience as outsiders. Buckley and Bale’s on-screen chemistry makes the relationship visceral and believable, and their performances carry the film’s emotional core.
(L-R) Christian Bale as Frank and Jessie Buckley as the Bride in The Bride! Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
I loved the music in the film. Fever Ray wrote original songs and even appears onscreen performing in an underground club in a scene that ultimately sends the Bride and Frank on the run. Sure, it’s anachronistic, but this is ultimately sci-fi, and it works tonally.
The Bride! is a dazzling film, unconventional as a Frankenstein story, but still one of the best in recent memory. Its mix of genres—horror, sci-fi, romance, crime, musical, and comedy—feels like disparate parts stapled together like Frank himself, yet they come together wonderfully in this whirlwind of a movie. Like its heroine, The Bride! insists on having a voice of its own.
The Bride! opens in theaters on March 6, 2026.
