The Bride! Review (Film, 2026)
The Bride! is beautiful to me.
Content warning: gore, blood, violence against women, foul language, sexual content, medical/surgical footage, gun violence, smoking, drinking
Do you know how wealthy I would be if I was paid every time I enjoyed a bizarre modern twist on the Frankenstein mythology? Do you know how little that number would change if the interpretation of Frankenstein required a meta element recognizing the role of Mary Shelley and authorship in the text? Do you know if anyone is hiring for this position? Cause let me tell you, I’m your guy.
Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal takes Mary Shelley as an author, makes her a character, and places her as a Greek Chorus-style framing device in her reinterpretation of Bride of Frankenstein. But calling it a reinterpretation is misleading, as well, as the text is much more concerned with the stories Mary Shelley would never be allowed to tell in her lifetime because of societal standards than actually revisiting Bride of Frankenstein as a true sequel to the story. I’d wager Maggie Gyllenhaal was actually more interested in creating an original thriller/romance/science fantasy/detective/musical than she was interested in remaking everything.
The Bride! is a film in conversation with pop culture, myth, literature, media, authorship, and feminism. Jessie Buckley’s dual role as the ghost of Mary Shelley and the ill-fated woman Mary Shelley chooses to possess at will throughout her lifetimes is a tough conceit for a film. I know I just wrote rapturous praise of Buckley’s skill in Hamnet, but The Bride! makes Hamnet look like community theater.
Mary Shelley is a crass, justifiably angry woman obsessed with the power of words and the life taken from her too soon due to societal standards and the limitations of medicine. She comes up with the idea to find a perfect essel to make the real version of Frankenstein she always envisioned. For those who don’t know, Shelley’s seminal science fiction novel (the touchstone for the genre) was heavily influenced by actual scientific research into reanimating animal specimens using electricity. The Bride!’s world imagines that the research naturally did grow to allow for human reinvigoration.
Shelley’s target is Ida, a crass young woman in 1930s Chicago tired of her lack of power and how easily her words are ignored due to societal standards and men. Her electric neon yellow hair is ratted out in waves that stand straight out from her head, accenting the pumpkin orange shirt dress that defines her look the entire film. Shelley hops on in, makes Ida say everything she is thinking, and accidentally causes her untimely demise at the hands of the mob.
At the same time, the Frankenstein’s Creature arrives at the home of Dr. Euphronius, an older scientist who has developed many techniques to reinvigorate the dead in her lab. Frank asks for a Bride; Dr. Euphronius eventually is worn down and agrees to use her research to make his dreams come true. The subject: Ida. The method? Reinvorgation by streetlight.
The result? One of the most brackish, over the town, outlandish, horrifying, hilarious, heartwarming, thought-provoking, and artistic versions of the Frankenstein story I’ve ever experienced. No, I do not believe this film is for everyone. Slipstream and weird fiction rarely are. I do believe that this is an auteur film meant to be experienced, studied, and argued over. Gyllenhaal proves her genius here; I hope she’s not written off as another madwoman writing stories to be lost to history.
The Bride! is currently playing in theaters.