The Bride! (dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal)

by Jack Martin | Mar 7, 2026

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 127 mins

UK Distributor: Warner Bros

UK Release Date: 6 March 2026

WHO’S IN THE BRIDE!?

Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Peter Sarsgaard, Annette Bening, Jake Gyllenhaal, Penélope Cruz, Julianne Hough, John Magaro, Jeannie Berlin, Linda Emond, Louis Cancelmi, Matthew Maher, Zlatko Burić

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Maggie Gyllenhaal (director, writer, producer), Osnat Handelsman-Keren, Talia Kleinhendler and Emma Tillinger Koskoff (producers), Hildur Guðnadóttir (composer), Lawrence Sher (composer), Dylan Tichenor (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

In 1930s Chicago, a woman (Buckley) is resurrected by Frankenstein’s monster (Bale)…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON THE BRIDE!?

There’s a classic Monty Python sketch about a couple who grow concerned about their cat sitting motionless outside, and they are recommended a service called Confuse-a-Cat Limited to get him to come back in. The service is basically a mini-stage show conducted with military precision that is a collection of extremely random, bizarre and – yes – confusing imagery that’s all piled together to create something that nobody, least of all a cat, can comprehend.

It appears that Confuse-a-Cat Limited has now branched out into the even more mind-boggling realm of filmmaking, as pretty much everything within writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second feature The Bride! feels designed by nature to confuse and bewilder its viewers back to their senses. However, the effect may be too strong, for this is a film that certainly isn’t short on ideas and especially not on ambition, but is so muddled in its overall intent with so many things being thrown at you simultaneously that the only real emotion you’ll be feeling throughout is, well, confusion.

To give you an idea of how wild Gyllenhaal’s reimagining of the classic monster movie Bride of Frankenstein is, it opens with Jessie Buckley as the ghost of Mary Shelley – yes, that Mary Shelley – possessing the body of a woman named Ida (also Buckley), a sex worker in 1930s Chicago who’s brutally killed after upsetting local mob boss Lupino (Zlatko Burić). Around the same time, Frankenstein’s monster aka “Frank” (Christian Bale) arrives in town – so does that mean Shelley exists in the very world she created, or is she simply telling this story that she’s inserted herself into for some reason? – seeking the help of local scientist Dr. Cornelia Euphronious (Annette Bening) to dig up a female corpse and re-animate her to be his new companion.

Of course, that corpse happens to be Ida (still possessed by Shelley, by the way), who’s brought back to life with no memory of her past but also a wild vocabulary and vast knowledge of the world around her, but soon a bit of gruesome violence leads to both undead figures going on the run, with detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his secretary Myrna Malloy (Penélope Cruz) in hot pursuit. All the while, Ida and Frank embark on a cross-country trek where they grow closer as a couple, kill a few unpleasant people, encountering famous movie stars like Fred Astaire-like matinee idol Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), and even ignite a female revolution for good measure. Oh, and every now and then, it also becomes a singing-and-dancing musical, because of course it does.

If you’re reading any of that and thinking to yourself, “well that sounds random and weirdly disconnected from itself”, you’re not far off. The Bride! is a film that, fittingly, feels like a Frankenstein’s monster of a movie, compiled of various individual ideas that have been stuffed into a single unruly body, one that can’t quite contain all these implanted organs. There is so much that Gyllenhaal is wanting to do with this film, whether it’s exploring the concept of female autonomy in an overwhelmingly patriarchal society, or being a Bonnie and Clyde-style road trip/killing spree, or even serving as a love letter to the Golden Age of Hollywood, that the admirable ambition very quickly overshadows the all-important intent. A lot is going on yet you’re never quite sure what is happening or why, since it’s all so loosely connected by a script that struggles to comprehend many if not all of its ideas, to a point where you start to wonder if this was a production where nobody on set was allowed to say “no” to the filmmaker’s increasingly out-of-control vision.

You can also tell that this is a film that values its ideas above everything else, because very little about the actual story makes even less sense. The stuff with Mary Shelley’s ghost is arguably one of the most straightforward concepts in The Bride!, as you’ll be far more occupied by so many other holes that Gyllenhaal doesn’t much care to address. For one, there’s the questionable logic behind certain characters’ decisions; then there’s why these extremely easy-to-recognise fugitives are so difficult to find even when they start displaying particular patterns; followed by how it is that Buckley’s Ida knows everything there is to know about other people’s backstories yet can’t comprehend her own; and finally whether or not all of this could have been avoided if Bale’s Frank – who despite the movie telling us otherwise doesn’t look monstrous enough for people to scream and cower in terror just by looking at him – had just found himself a prostitute to relieve his urges instead. Put simply, those who thrive on narrative nitpicking will find many a nit to pick here, perhaps too much for this to pass as a comprehensive story.

But regardless of it being quite a profound mess, The Bride! remains fascinating in the sheer number of leaps it is making. You can tell that Gyllenhaal is embracing every little idea she can come up with, and her actors are equally as committed to delivering performances that are as unhinged as they are borderline campy, with some striking production design and colourful cinematography enhancing a truly mad world where too much may be possible. However, that alone isn’t enough to save The Bride! from being the kind of movie you would put on solely to confuse your cat, and by extension everyone else in its vicinity.

SO, TO SUM UP…

The Bride! is an extremely ambitious but overwhelmingly messy reimagining of the Frankenstein myth that throws far too many ideas into a script that already doesn’t make much sense, though it’s impossible to not admire the commitment of filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal in bringing to life such a vivid yet incomprehensible vision.