If you love classic movies, THE BRIDE! is pure delight, fun with a brain that is a treat deluxe for those who love both classic movies and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s original book “Frankenstein.” That description fits this writer and the novel is having a moment now, with Guillermo del Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN and now this film. But in this wild, smart and inventive film, director Maggie Gyllenhaal not only pays homage to the book, but the Frankenstein and particularly Bride of Frankenstein movies, along with a host of 1930s and 1940s films and genres, ranging from film noir to black-and-white musicals and gangster flicks, with a little more modern films like BONNIE AND CLYDE and YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN tossed in. Even author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley herself, the brilliant teenager who wrote the original 1818 novel, appears as a character in the film.
All that plus a fabulous cast, led by Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley, featuring Annette Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz. The film sports a generous sprinkling of movie and even literary references, in dialog or visually, which adds a great deal of fun. And it is all done with an off-beat slight feminist twist that puts the spotlight on the The Bride.
Plus the ghost of author Mary Shelley possesses a gangster’s moll and a woman is the mad scientist in this tale. What more could you possibly want?
THE BRIDE is both clever and a very cinematic film. THE BRIDE! actually opens with the author Mary Shelley (played in a entertainingly crazy way by Jesse Buckley) speaking to us as a spirit from the grave. We see only Buckley’s face, in an oval and in black-and-white, like an antique photo in a locket, while the author spits rapid-fire vocabulary about her biography and literature. The author introduces our story, and then returns as occasional narrator or disruptive spirit. This begins when Shelley possesses, like a demon, a young blonde gangster’s moll named Ida (also Buckley) in 1930s Chicago. The possessed moll, when the author is in charge, spouts poetry and literary references, particularly mentioning Herman Melville’s character Bartleby, who sows chaos by refusing to do things, saying “I prefer not to,” a phrase that pops up continually.
After our (ultimately violent) intro to the woman who will become the Bride, we meet Frankenstein’s monster, played winningly by Christian Bale. A man in a hat pulled low to hide his face and with a scarf covering his lower face (a la Claude Rains in THE INVISIBLE MAN) shows up at a 1930s Chicago medical research facility, looking to speak to a particular scientist, a Dr. Euphronious. He’s turned away at first, but finally a woman comes out to talk to him. She reveals herself to be Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), as he removes his coverings and introduces himself as a Mr. Frankenstein (Bale). This lonely creation of a mad scientist (and an author) long ago asks the scientist for her help – to build a bride for him. She refuses at first but, good mad scientist that she is, Dr. Euphronious eventually agrees.
Thus launches the tale of the Bride and her Frankenstein, a far more complete story of the Bride than in James Whale’s classic film, including this Bride’s quest for a name, an identity, beyond just that one. The pair embark on an adventure and a journey that sends them out into the 1930s world, against the wishes of Dr. Euphonious, where they sample jazz clubs and movie houses, among other things, and then go on the run as outlaws, “Bonnie and Clyde”-style, after some people turn up dead.
Frank, as the Bride calls him, is movie-obsessed and particularly a fan of one dancing star (Jake Gyllenhaal) of movie musicals, which reveals that the “monster” is a bit of a romantic. When he’s feeling low, at trip to the movies to see his favorite star in one of his dance-filled musical romances or comedies lifts his spirits.
Their adventure is unpredictable, often violent and sometimes bloody, but it is also a monster of a love story. The Bride’s journey of self-discovery is a big part of this film but not the whole story. It is also a wild, entertaining ride, that also involved a pair of noir-ish detectives, played by Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz, on their trail, as well as gangster kingpins, corrupt officials, fancy parties with movie stars, and more. There is singing and dancing scenes, movie-going and movie houses, characters who find themselves in the movie (a la Buster Keaton), and a score that includes “Putting on the Ritz” (thank you, Mel Brooks) and Monster Mash.
The cast is great. Christian Bale is a marvelous Frankenstein, sweetly polite, even shy, but determined and endlessly resourceful. He is also a hopeless romantic when it comes to his Bride and to the movies he loves. Bale plays this movie-loving monster with such charm and grace, he is irresistible, and turns on extra magic in the dance sequences. Jessie Buckley is electrifying in her two-part role, as the wild, fast-talking and brainy author, who periodically possesses the Bride and as the sweet but confused newly-created Bride, who does not even know her name, much less who she is, or should be. The couple waver between love and her desire to be her own person. And along the way, her rule-breaking launches a social movement of women who want to break free of their restraints in this sexist time, women who show their colors by staining their mouths with ink, to look like hers.
Annette Bening is a charmer as well as the crusty, off-beat doctor, who we suspect has secrets and a history that goes unspoken. As the noir detectives, Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz also are wonderful, with Sarsgaard playing a world-weary soul with some hidden pain, and Cruz an ambitious detective who is the real brains of the team but who has to pose as her partner’s secretary rather than his protege due to the sexism of the era.
THE BRIDE! is entertaining, smart, thought-provoking, twisting, and a cleverly constructed creation of borrowed parts (much like Frankenstein) from countless classic films, film history, literature and even a little echo of the “Me Too” movement. THE BRIDE! is a wow of a piece of cinema, and certainly a must-see for any fan of either classic movies or Mary Shelley’s classic Gothic horror novel. Just great fun.
THE BRIDE! opens in theaters on Friday, Mar. 6, 2026.
RATING: 4 out of 4 stars
