March 9, 2026 · Watch the official trailer
Originality in modern filmmaking is often talked about as if it’s disappearing, or worse yet, that a “singular vision” by a filmmaker other than a traditional auteur can be considered risk-taking to be kind in outright dismissal of a piece of avant-garde cinema.
This was largely the reaction to Emerald Fennell’s unique twist on the classic Emily Bronte novel “Wuthering Heights” last month and will certainly be used in a similar fashion to dismiss the audacious narrative writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal brings to her take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, “The Bride!”
There’s a deep sense of irony in the fact that a similarly unique and bizarre twist on the source material – Yorgos Lanthimos’ dark comedy “Poor Things” – was widely celebrated upon its release on its way to four Academy Awards and yet “The Bride!” which is just as confident in its cinema will be widely lampooned despite some equally strong highlights
Rather than offering a straightforward retelling of the Frankenstein mythology like the recent Guillermo del Toro film for Netflix, Gyllenhaal twists the entire premise on its head by pushing Shelley herself into the spotlight as a ghostly figure haunting the mind of a woman that would become the titular character through Shelley’s twisted imagination.
Jessie Buckley – who’s likely to win an Academy Award this weekend for her portrayal of Shakespeare’s wife in the Chloe Zhao film “Hamnet” – leaps with full force into this strange dual performance as both the eccentric author and her psychotically saccharin and charming creature, reanimated in 1930s Chicago to be the bride of a lonesome Frankenstein’s monster played by Christian Bale.
As both Shelley and the Bride, Buckley continues her deeply intense work, pushing herself to the fringes of the screenplay with multiple accents and distinctive physicality to show both halves of a single psyche that feels reminiscent of Joaquin Phoenix’s Oscar winning turn in “Joker.”
While the screenplay meanders about in tone from gothic horror to musical comedy and noir detective drama, Buckley holds nothing back with an unbridled performance that elevates what could have been a very poorly constructed amalgamation of cinema styles into one relatively cohesive, albeit loose narrative.
Her chemistry with Bale doesn’t fare as well, though it’s less about the pairing of two method actors boldly taking chances on screen and more about how Gyllenhaal never truly sees the two lead characters connecting as a romantic pair despite Frank literally bullying a doctor played by Annette Bening into bringing the Bride back from the dead.
Bale’s Frank is a much more unique take on a classic monster villain with it being implied that years of loneliness and wandering about the world have made Frank lonely and emotionally fragile, transposing his identity onto a vaudevillian actor played by Gyllenhaal’s brother Jake, to the point where Frank’s idolatry of his cinematic hero proves to be his downfall.
The film’s ensemble cast is strong, though both Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz are woefully underutilized as detectives on the trail of the undead couple as the film turns them into Bonnie and Clyde adjacent fugitives.
That unevenness carries over into parts of Gyllenhaal’s screenplay, which occasionally struggles to reconcile haphazard tonal shifts, though technical elements of “The Bride!” keeps things afloat for cinephiles willing to ride the bumpy narrative waters.
Cinematographer Laurence Sher approaches the material with a visual language that firmly plants the film inside the aesthetic of the early 1930s. Working with a rich, often changing color palette of smoky interiors and carefully composed wide shots, Sher creates a world that feels rooted in the visual grammar of Depression-era Hollywood while still taking advantage of modern filmmaking scale.
Those choices become even more striking in IMAX, where the wider frame allows the world of “The Bride!” and production designer Mark Tildesley’s inhabited work to come to life on a broader, almost VistaVision scale, giving the film a visual confidence that the narrative occasionally struggles to maintain.
Gyllenhaal’s screenplay moves freely from gothic horror to musical comedy to noir detective drama in ever changing homage to films throughout cinema history, and while tone shifts almost seem to happen by random in the editing, they tend to work far better visually. Sher and Tildesley maintain such a strong sense of time and place that the film’s shifting moods still feel anchored within the same cinematic world.
“The Bride!” has the hallmarks of a traditional awards season contender a visually ambitious studio production anchored by a daring director and a high-profile ensemble cast operating at the height of its craft. Yet despite the strong technical work and intense lead performance, Gyllenhaal’s sophomore directorial effort is far too out there and to survive nearly a year of awards scrutiny.
Originally developed for Netflix before eventually landing at Warner Bros., “The Bride!” arrives at a moment when the studio itself faces an uncertain future as its parent company moves toward another round of consolidation. That uncertainty comes even as Warner Bros. appears poised to release two of the year’s strongest Best Picture contenders in “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners.”
As a result, “The Bride!” feels like the kind of ambitious studio gamble in a Hollywood landscape that may become overly homogenized.
Cinephiles intrigued by the strangeness of the premise or the strength of its trailers should make an effort to seek out this unique and original twist on a classic horror tale in the biggest screen possible, though some casual movie fans might find it too jumbled or bizarre to take a chance on before it hits a streaming service later this year.
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