The Bride (Photo – Warner Bros. Pictures)
I sometimes wonder if there’s an alternate universe, and after seeing The Bride, I’m sure it’s possible.
The Bride
Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal – 2026
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan
At least, that’s how I felt leaving the theater with my head well spun. Written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, the movie starts with the cackling spirit of Mary Shelley, the author of the 1818 Frankenstein, a name lately dragged through the ice in the recent film of the same name.
That was a better film than this.
Apparently, the cockney-accented Mary Shelley (highly unlikely, the daughter of a philosopher and a woman’s rights advocate) finds a crack in the universe and does a psychic mind-meld with a Chicago woman in 1936. Well, okay.
That woman, Ida, is played by Jessie Buckley. Once the possession takes place in a Chicago restaurant, she spits out puns, insults, and accusations to the lurking mobsters. She’s tossed downstairs, killed, and buried.
Her revival is courtesy of one “Frank,” played by Christian Bale as a lovelorn golem who, apparently self-reanimated from the grave, comes to Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) and wants to have a dead woman reanimated for himself; it’s a compatibility thing. They dig up the recently murdered Ida and jolt her back to life.
She has issues: wacky as the Harley Quinn character from the Suicide Squad movies, potty-mouthed when not thrashing about like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. She does a Marlene Dietrich imitation and throws in a hiss as a shout-out to Elsa Lanchester from the original Bride of Frankenstein. She causes a nightclub riot where a Depression-era joint turns into a rave with a drum kit and singer in heavy makeup; then the couple is back on the streets, where it’s 1936 all over again.
After Frank stomps a couple of would-be rapists to death, a road trip from Chicago to New York follows. The Bonnie-and-Clyde reference is pretty clear as Ida—calling herself Penelope and then “The Bride”—puts pedal to the metal like Faye Dunaway in that 1966 classic.
A classic is something The Bride isn’t. The continual anachronisms and movie references (though, curiously enough, the movie Frankenstein itself is never mentioned, perhaps licensing issues?) had my head spinning. To stretch credulity, however, you first have to establish it, and after 90 minutes I felt that if a flying saucer had wobbled into the frame, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
Jessie Buckley does crazy impressively as the Ida-Penelope-Bride character, and Christian Bale acts through prosthetics (there are six of these specialized artists mentioned by name in the film’s final credits) and even hoofs in a nightclub like Peter Boyle’s song-and-dance in Young Frankenstein. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a Fred Astaire-like film star. Penélope Cruz and Peter Sarsgaard are the cops who chase the couple.
Things keep happening, at least, so The Bride is not a bad film, but sometimes a foolish consistency is a good thing, as is less rather than more. Though I congratulated myself for catching the movie references, the film’s sound and fury drained me. My spinning head stabilized once I was outside the theater.
> Playing at Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, Regency Academy Cinemas, Regal Paseo, Regal Edwards Alhambra Renaissance, AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, AMC Santa Anita 16, Regal UA La Canada, and Laemmle Glendale.
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