Film Review - The Bride (2026)

The Bride is written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhall and based off of the Bride of Frankenstein and stars Jesse Buckley as Ida a young woman who falls to her death on a staircase and is reanimated back to life by Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) as a request for Frankenstein the Monster (Christian Bale) who desires a companion after a century of loneliness but their escapades catch the attention of 2 local detectives (Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz) as well as a popular movie star (Jake Gyllenhall)

The Bride is all over the place as a movie, so much so that there would be times while I was watching it where I would have a big smile on my face and then in the very next scene I would be sitting in my cinema seat going “What the Fuck is this” but before I delve more into that I want to talk about the positives as there are some.

Firstly the cinematography by Lawrence Sher, the production design by Karen Murphy and the costumes by Sandy Powell are all top notch, the sets feel real and lived in like a cross between Tim Burton (Bening’s character felt like a character from a Tim Burton movie) and Guillermo Del Toro (who coincidentally just made a Frankenstein movie for Netflix), the costumes feel very authentic to the 1930’s setting so much so that you can almost feel the wool of the uniforms and the fine silk of the suits and the cinematography lights these well including the night scenes.

The film also has a great performance by Jesse Buckley as well and she goes for it 115% ranging from vulnerability to dark humour to sadisticness with ease and if this movie didn’t have her in it it would be nigh on unwatchable.

Because the real problem here is the screenplay and the more I thought about this movie I kept thinking “So What”

Yes this movie has great cinematography,

Yes this movie has great production design,

Yes this movie has great costumes,

And it has a committed performance by an actress who knows what movie she’s making.

But so what without a script that has a firm sense of narrative direction, a consistent tone and a clear structure all of that means nothing and this movie lacks all of those, the narrative direction is absent as it feels like Gyllenhall just throws every idea she had for this movie into the script in the hope that something/anything might stick, the tone ranges from sadness to action to seriousness to black comedy with all the subtlety of a car driving at fast speed and there is no clear structure to the storytelling at all it goes from one plotline to the next without taking the time to develop any of them.

Well except the detective storyline where the woman does all the work like she’s Penny from Inspector Gadget and gets none of the credit and this is a real waste of a world class talent in Penelope Cruz.

As for Christian Bale as Frankenstein well his performance ranges from brooding silence to mumbling his lines and then YELLING HIS LINES LIKE THIS AS IF HE WAS BACK ON THE FUCKING SET OF TERMINATOR SALVATION!!!! and it just got annoying after a while, as for Jake Gyllenhall and Peter Sarsgaard their fine but not in the film enough to be all that memorable.

And so that was the Bride and it has some strong elements but So What without a good script to make it all matter none of it does and as great as Buckley is she can only do so much without a firm script to carry the film, there is a reason so many movie documentaries emphasize the importance of the script and this movie is proof of that in real time, 1 out of 5.