The newest Frankenstein adaptation, “The Bride!,” is bombing in theaters with mixed reactions from critics and audiences. Like the man himself, the film is a loosely stitched together pile of big ideas, but it had a lovely soul.
Jessie Buckley led “The Bride!” as Ida, a bleach-blonde midwest flapper girl in 1936 Chicago possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelley (who Buckley also plays). The film opens with Ida sitting at a table with a bunch of mobsters, who throw her down a flight of stairs after she goes on an accusatory and literary monologue. Her death plays behind the title sequence as we watch her neck snap and body hit the metal stairs at awkward angles until she finally reaches the bottom, where she stares up at the camera with a serene, blank expression.
We then cut to Frankenstein’s Monster, played by Christian Bale. He shows up on the doorstep of our almost typical mad scientist, Dr. Cornelia Euphronious (Annette Bening). Frank tells her he’s “looking for intercourse,” and hoped Euphronious would make him a Bride. So they dig up Ida and reanimate her, except she comes back without her memories and still possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelley. Soon, the two monsters escape the lab and go on a Bonnie and Clyde-esque murder spree together.
From here, “The Bride!” is a monster thriller, gothic horror, doomed romance, supernatural pseudo-biopic, revolutionary feminist reprisal, detective noir, mafia film, love letter to classic Hollywood and has a few dance numbers to boot. Obviously, this was too much to cram into the two hour runtime, and made for an incoherent and suffocated story.
The film made a dismal $7.3 million domestically against an $80 million budget in its opening weekend. This is far below studio Warner Bros’ already unprofitable $16-18 million sales projection for these first few days. These are disappointing figures for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second feature film as a writer and director, especially after the critical success of her directorial debut, “Lost Daughter,” in 2021.
The problems with the plot didn’t actually feel that frustrating, however, because Buckley and Bale had the charisma and skill to pull it off, or at least smooth it over. Their movements felt grisly, and their line delivery was deliciously theatrical. Then, sometimes, their scenes would burst open with a moment of truly sublime humanity from these undead monsters that gave the film a tangible soul.
The soul of “The Bride!” was ever-present in the visuals too. The dark alleys, old Hollywood dance numbers, flashes of dreams and the neon lights of 1930s Times Square, were beautiful and visually dense. It was not overdone and stuck fiercely to the historical period while still making room for the surreal noir style.
The film was also unblushingly sexual, violent and gruesome, but it never felt gratuitous. Consent was central to the sex and sexual assaulters were given neither mercy nor quarter – instead they were brutally murdered. It was refreshing to see; sex and violence in other films (“Wuthering Heights”) tend to come with the overwhelming sense that they expect to shock. In “The Bride!” they are simply, and often in a grotesquely romantic way, blunt and unrestrained.
Despite its failings, the film at least took a big swing and showed some soul, which Hollywood is hesitant to do at the best of times, and especially now when it is struggling to turn a profit on even the most popular movies. “The Bride!” wasn’t bad, it just didn’t stick the landing, and I think it’s worth watching if you like weird movies.
