The Bride! review

THE BRIDE!: 

UNIVERSAL MONSTERS MEETS BONNIE AND CLYDE!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: *** out of 4

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale in The Bride!

 

            Maggie Gyllenhaal (Stranger Than Fiction, The Dark Knight, Crazy Heart) crafts a monstrous version of Bonnie and Clyde in the new Gothic romance horror film, The Bride! and her second directing effort after 2021’s The Lost Daughter. I was looking forward to this when I found out it was being made, and after seeing the trailer in front of One Battle After Another, it definitely seemed like a different take on the Bride of Frankenstein story. 

            There’s been a resurgence of interest in Frankenstein in film recently, with the Guillermo del Toro Frankenstein movie released not too long ago, and now this. I can’t blame them; it’s a classic story that deserves to be retold until the end of time, and the same goes for The Bride of Frankenstein. 

            Before anyone asks, no, this isn’t even close to reaching the quality of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein or even the original Universal Bride of Frankenstein, but I admire a lot of what Gyllenhaal did for this film. The Bride! is a very stylish looking movie that’s dripping with gothic atmosphere and grungy cinematography that looks great on the big screen, and the idea of taking a Bonnie and Clyde approach with Frankenstein and the Bride is an interesting way of retelling their story. I actually liked this more than the recent Dracula movie. 

            The film follows Frankenstein’s Monster AKA Frank (Christian Bale-American Psycho, The Dark Knighttrilogy, The Fighter), enlisting the help of reanimation expert Dr. Cornelia Euphronius (Annette Bening-Mars Attacks!, The Kids Are All Right, Nyad) to create a companion for him after a century of loneliness. She does in fact create a partner for Frank out of the corpse of a woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley-Women Talking, Wicked Little Letters, Hamnet) and the two of them form a strong romance…and equally strong crime spree as they cause chaos throughout 1936 Chicago with police detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard-Black Mass, The Batman, September 5) and his assistant, Myrna Malloy (Penélope Cruz-Volver, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Ferrari) and notorious crime boss Lupino (Zlatko Burić-2012, Triangle of Sadness, Superman (2025)) hot on their trail. 

            The film also stars John Magaro (Carol, The Big Short, Overlord) as Clyde, Matthew Maher (Gone Baby Gone, A Most Violent Year, The Mastermind) as James, Jeannie Berlin (The Heartbreak Kid, Inherent Vice, The Fabelmans) as Greta, Maggie’s brother Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain, Prisoners, Spider-Man: Far From Home) as Ronnie Reed, Julianne Hough (Burlesque, Footloose (2011), Rock of Ages) as Iris/Jinx, Louis Cancelmi (The Irishman, Killers of the Flower Moon, Sorry, Baby) as Officer Goodman, and Buckley as the voice of Mary Shelley (The author of the original Frankenstein and the film’s narrator). 

            Overall, The Bride! is an ambitious take on the classic monster couple, even if the end result is rather uneven. It’s a bizarre combination of things, Frankenstein, Bonnie and Clyde, and even the two Joker movies (I’ll go on record and say this is a better Joker: Folie à Deux than the actual Joker: Folie à Deux!), and I can easily see the film being a mixed bag amongst moviegoers. 

            For me, though, while I can’t say the movie worked completely, I was entertained throughout and invested in what was going on. The first half of the film, I think, is the strongest because it really plays around with this grungy Bonnie and Clyde-style storyline with the two monsters causing mayhem in the city, with the Bride unintentionally starting a revolution similar to the first Joker movie, where people wear makeup like the person, except this time it’s for female empowerment. 

            The monster version of Bonnie and Clyde was the most engaging part of the film, complete with one of the most awesome dance sequences I’ve ever seen. The second half gets too cluttered with plot points that don’t go anywhere, like a subplot involving Sarsgaard and Cruz’s characters as the two detectives and another with this crime boss who cuts women’s tongues out for seemingly no reason, and doesn’t impact the film at all, you could have taken these out, and it wouldn’t have impacted the story. 

            Besides, we’re really here for the monsters, and Jessie Buckley, who is already on fire with a potential Best Actress Oscar win for Hamnet, is absolutely magnificent as The Bride/Ida. Maggie Gyllenhaal may be the director, but this IS Buckley’s movie through and through and delivers this truly electrifying (No pun intended), no-holds-barred performance. The Academy probably won’t recognize her for this, but she goes hard in the film. 

            Christian Bale is also very good as Frank/Frankenstein’s Monster and plays the sad loner character quite well; he does add a lot of emotional levity to this otherwise psychotic power couple. I legit bought Buckley and Bale’s romantic chemistry in this more so than any of the characters from Wuthering Heights, and this movie is literally about monsters, so there you go. 

            Despite some narrative inconsistencies and moments of repetition, I thought The Bride! was a stylish, crazy ride with strong performances by Buckley and Bale, beautifully gothic production design, and a unique take on the story, courtesy of Gyllenhaal’s ambitious approach to the source material. It probably won’t go down as a new Frankenstein movie classic, but I can easily see this getting a cult following in later years as a complete madhouse of a monster crime film.