The Bride!: Film Review

screentime and no dialogue. In this film, Buckley's Bride has much more screentime and dialogue, but she has no arc. The way the story is set up, there’s no journey she has to go on. There's nothing that I felt she needed to change or learn. She was boisterous, loud, erratic, and at times, combative with men, but she was her own woman.

She’s stripped of a backstory by Gyllenhaal giving her amnesia, even as far as not remembering her name which becomes her only internal conflict. I understand that this forces her to rediscover herself but she’s never really given a chance as she’s always stuck in the context of men. She was revived without consent at the request of a man, an idea at which the film gestures heavily, but about which doesn't actually say anything meaningful. 

She is repeatedly harrassed and assaulted, the purpose of which might be to establish villainy in the men - one instance is clearly played for laughs - but all it does is undermine her agency and womanhood. In almost every instance, it happens to her and it just becomes a part of who she is. Yes, revenge is enacted against most of the perpetrators, but most of that violence is done by Frank, the man, and the few acts of violence the Bride commits are incredibly tame compared to the events that begat them. The ending is also a culprit here too, but that would be too many spoilers. "Exploitative" might be the word.

To my knowledge, the framing device of the original Bride of Frankenstein film is similar to this iteration in that Shelley is established as a kind of narrator and she is played by the same actress as that of the Bride (in the original film, Elsa Lanchester, and in this film, Buckley). What I find interesting about this version is that Shelley seems to be having more of a one-on-one dialogue with the Bride, inhabiting her and acting as a sort of conscience. 

I like the idea of the protagonist communicating with the author of the source material to coax out the version of this character she wanted to write... but it goes nowhere. Near the halfway mark, Shelley as a character and narrator disappears and doesn't show up again for (what feels like) another hour. I love when films become "meta" and self-referential, and I think there was an opportunity to at least posit what Shelley might've actually felt about her story or even its adaptations, but the ball got dropped. 

Christian Bale's performance as Frank is committed as well, but it's almost the kind of thing we've come to expect from Bale. What peeves me about Frank, though, is I felt his arc to be stronger and clearer than the Bride's! He's set up as a man overwheled by his loneliness, and though he overcomes this by the creation of the Bride, his story becomes about the internal conflict of lying to this woman so he can be in love. It is through this love, though, that he changes as a man. Maggie Gyllenhaal also tries to insert a treatise on the power of cinema in his storyline through his obsession with a musical actor played by Jake Gyllenhaal, but that aspect is also undercooked. In ways, he feels more like a protagonist than she does. He incites everything, and by the end, he's the one who has changed.

I think Writer Maggie and Director Maggie need to have a conversation and make sure they’re on the same page. They both have huge ideas but I don't think either one worked with the other to comminucate them here. In Gyllenhaal's first film, The Lost Daughter, her writing prowess, specifiaclly, shines. The mystery crafted around Buckley and Olivia Colman's characters (they play older/younger versions of the same character) is so enticing, and the performances from them and the rest of the company reflect it. That film also feels incredibly sure of itself, tonally. 

Here, the film doesn't feel like it knows what it wants to be because Gyllenhaal has it try to be too many things. The dance sequences - one major and a few small - are notable (it almost feels like the film wants to be a muscial), but they serve no purpose other than to say "she's liberated" (though it never feels that way). She includes almost-powerful montages of revolutionaries rioting, but ruined by them shouting on-the-nose chants, “REVOLT,” and, “BRAIN ATTACK,” as if the audience can’t see what they’re doing. She includes monologues that have Buckley scream "RAGE," and while you understand its roots, she gives her character no real catharsis. What it boils down to is this: if you're going to be BOLD, be bold all-around.

I think this would have gagged during the Obama administration. Barbie (2023, dir. Greta Gerwig) only got away with it because it's a film about a children's toy, was marketed to children and teens, and thus required a more entry-level explanation. This film, being R-rated and targeted for adults, doesn't get that pass from me. Feminism and female rage is an absurdly important, complex, nuanced theme that by now, in 2026, deserves a complex, nuanced exploration, not this surface-level, male-centered, pussy hat (no shade), "it's time to boss up," "GIRL RRRRIOT!" hashtag feminism that feels stuck 14 years in the past. If The Bride! came out during the time of Girls as it feels like it should have, Hannah Horvath would tweet about it and EYE would retweet, but in a time where we are in desperate need of true radicalism in art, The Bride! represents a half-baked attempt that is nowhere near as radical as it (and its author) thinks it is.

The last thing I'll say is this: In the film, there is a female detective character, played by Penélope Cruz, whose entire setup and only real conflict comes from the fact that nobody thinks she is a detective because she's a woman. In the third act, there's an eye-rolling payoff to this subplot, after which, only one woman in my audience, presumably white, applauded and cheered. I think that's exactly what Gyllenhaal & co. wanted to have happen and it feels like they want it too bad. I understand that I am a man that is into men and thus have no connection to the experience of a woman, so if it's just that I missed something, if this movie affirms you and you feel the need to applaud and cheer, go right ahead. Hannah Horvath would. All adventurous women do.

Viewed on 3/2/26 at press screening

Published on 3/4/26