Following up her exceptional directing debut, The Lost Daughter (which also featured a staggering turn from Jessie Buckley), filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal has created a version of a familiar horror story unlike anything I’ve seen before, and most of it works spectacularly. The Bride! doesn’t just take the Frankenstein mythology and shift it into a more contemporary setting—that being the 1930s—but it takes it into new genres and introduces ideas about bodily agency, romance, rebellion, and even captivity.
The film opens with Buckley as the ghost of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, angry from beyond the grave that she died so young and never got to finish the story she wanted to tell about a female version of the doctor’s undead creation. In the first of many bold leaps in this tale, Shelley possesses a young woman named Ida (also Buckley), a party girl in Chicago who is murdered after she is taken over by Shelley, who can apparently see into the minds of the gangsters in the club she frequents. She starts screaming out their devious crimes, and when one gangster tells her companion (John Magaro) to take care of her, she ends up falling down a flights of stairs.
This moment coincides with a visit by Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale, complete with staples across his forehead) to the lab of groundbreaking scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), asking her to create for him a companion in the same way he was created, and they find Ida’s body and make all sorts of magic happen. When Ida wakes up, she has no idea who she is or who she was, but Shelley still exists in her, with “Frank” filling in some fictional details, including giving her the new name of Penelope/Penny. The monster also has his own set of issues and quirks, including an obsession with film star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), whose films have given him comfort and life goals for years.
Also thrown into this highly chaotic mix are investigators Det. Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his (far more capable) assistant Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz), who are attempting to track down this mystery couple that is leaving a trail of destruction and bodies on what turns into a road trip from Chicago to New York and back. The Bride! willfully borrows from such works as Poor Things (which was also a take on the Frankenstein story), Bonnie & Clyde, and even The Joker, as Penny’s highly volatile actions earn her a female following in terms of both her violent actions and her unusual look of blacks smears across her face and body (like the coolest—or the worst—tattoos in history). Eventually, Penny learns the truth about her creation and her connection to Det. Wiles, and all roads from that point lead back to Chicago and the good Dr. Euphronious.
The Bride! is loud, brash, and fully in your face with both its visuals and messages, and if it wasn’t anchored by Buckley’s riveting, cacophonous performance, I’m not sure as much of it would work as it does. There are moments where I feel like director Gyllenhaal is looking at her audience and asking “Isn’t this weird and wild?” And the truth is, sometimes it does feel forced, but not often. Seeing Bale as something of a doltish, lovesick puppy under her spell (when he isn’t curb-stomping someone who is threatening them) is hilarious, as this feels as much a risk for him and anyone else in the cast. I’m not sure the ending quite lands the way it intends, but by that point, I was fully into the radical telling of these outlaw lovers, and their path of destruction through the country and cinema history.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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