Movie: The Bride!
Release Date: March 6, 2026
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Runtime: 2 hours, 6 minutes
Genre: Romance, drama
Rating: D
With a story that takes a lot of swings and mostly misses, “The Bride!” is a film that is just as patched and sewn together as Frankenstein’s Creature himself.
Writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal said that her inspiration for making the film came from watching the original “Bride of Frankenstein” and realizing that the Bride was given nothing to say. However, despite having more dialogue, Gyllenhaal’s Bride doesn’t really have much to say either.
The film starts with the ghost of Mary Shelley, the author of the “Frankenstein” novel (Jessie Buckley), giving a monologue about how she was unable to finish her story before she died. This leads to her possessing Ida (also Buckley), a young woman in the 1930s who ends up being murdered for speaking out about a mob boss.
This is where Frankenstein’s Monster, Frank (Christian Bale), enters the story as he has been alone since his inception in 1819 and is desperately seeking someone to share his life with. He goes to Doctor Euphronious (Annette Bening), who agrees to make him a bride. They dig up Ida’s body and bring her back to life, but she isn’t satisfied staying at Euphronious’ institution to be tested on.
Frank, who is obsessed with musicals made by famous actor Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), takes her out for a night at the movies and the local nightclub. Their night of fun turns them into fugitives after an incident with two men. They end up running all over the country to evade the authorities led by detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his secretary, Myrna Malloy (Penélope Cruz).
While the film suffers majorly from being poorly written and directed, the acting is the best part of it. Bale and Buckley are great in their roles as Frank and the Bride, while Benning, Sarsgaard and Cruz all provide solid supporting performances.
Bale gives his all to the performance and makes Frank seem surprisingly sympathetic and endearing. There’s a vulnerability in Bale’s performance from how lonely and desperate for connection Frank is, and the way he brings Frank’s love for the Bride to life is sweet. Frank is both a man-child with an extremely violent temper and a sorrowful man who despises being a monster and gets anxiety attacks, all of which Bale compellingly plays.
Buckley similarly goes all in and convincingly goes back and forth between the Bride and Mary Shelley. She’s especially great in the quiet, emotional scenes where the Bride is trying to piece together who she is, which Buckley plays with a necessary tenderness. Watching her fall in love with Frank feels real, and she plays the role as if she were really shot full of electricity.
Bale and Buckley have great chemistry, and in a better movie, they could be a truly electrifying match. Despite everything they give to their roles, they’re still ultimately let down by extremely poor writing and directing, with dialogue that often makes no sense.
The only other thing that stands out in the film is the work of Bale’s makeup team. They do a great job transforming him into Frank, as shown by his full-body makeup. He’s completely unrecognizable in the role and truly looks like someone patched together from multiple body parts.
The film suffers from an extensive identity problem, as it has no clue what kind of movie it actually wants to be. The movie attempts to be a Bonnie and Clyde-style crime thriller, a tender romantic drama, a musical, a monster horror, a comedy and an inspiration for a feminist revolution. In trying to be all of these, the film fails at being any and ends up being boring and incoherent.
The film is full of disjointed, random sequences only connected by a very thin and weak story. Much of the film follows Frank and the Bride hanging out while they’re on the run, and very rarely do they interact with other humans. When they do, though, it ends up being extremely violent, and neither really seems to care about finding diplomatic solutions to their problems. The film acts as if the Bride has something important to say and should be an inspiration, but she doesn’t do anything to warrant that.
There are multiple unnecessary elements in the film, such as the Mary Shelley subplot, which often disappears when it’s convenient for the story. The character of Ronnie Reed fulfills his purpose within two scenes, but the film keeps him around longer. It drastically shifts tones multiple times in a jarring way. The musical sequences feel out of place, and the violence often feels like violence for the sake of it rather than being meaningful in any way.
The film attempts to be edgy and groundbreaking, but ultimately amounts to nothing. There’s nothing inspirational about the Bride, and the incoherence of the film often takes away from the potential her and Frank have as characters. Gyllenhaal made the film to prove that the Bride of Frankenstein has something important to say, but all she accomplishes is demonstrating that some ideas are not meant to be brought to life.