Here comes the motherfucking bride: Gyllenhaal’s monster masterpiece is alive with anarchic joy.
Maggie Gyllenhaal has done something remarkable with her sophomore feature, The Bride!: she’s taken the stitches and scars of cinema history and reanimated them into something entirely her own. The film wears its influences like badges of honour, one part Fritz Lang’s expressionist masterpiece Metropolis, one part Arthur Penn’s outlaw saga Bonnie and Clyde, and just a touch of James Whale’s 1935 classic Bride of Frankenstein.
Yet somehow, through Gyllenhaal’s audacious vision, these familiar threads weave together into a tapestry that feels explosively original. Set against the grimy glamour of 1930s Chicago, this punk-rock reimagining follows a lonely Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) who persuades a mad scientist (Annette Bening) to create him a companion, only to unleash something far more complex and dangerous than either anticipated.
The result is a film that name-checks its predecessors while gleefully burning the rulebook they left behind. From the shadowy, noir-tinged cinematography that nods to Metropolis’s German Expressionist roots to the lovers-on-the-run mayhem that channels Bonnie and Clyde’s countercultural fury, The Bride! synthesises its inspirations into a defiantly feminist howl. Gyllenhaal doesn’t just borrow from these films; she interrogates them, asking what happens when the monsters finally get to tell their own story.
In 1930s Chicago, groundbreaking scientist Dr. Euphronious brings a murdered young woman back to life to be a companion for Frankenstein’s monster. What happens next is beyond what either of them could ever have imagined.
The Bride! delights with an anarchic energy, but its underlying plot is tight, its characters clearly drawn and beautifully performed, and its aesthetic wondrous. In just her second feature, after 2021’s sublime The Lost Daughter, Gyllenhaal’s cemented her spot as one of the most exciting filmmakers working.
The Bride! Review: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Feminist Frankenstein Reboot Is a Punk Rock Triumph
A Horror Movie review by Hope Madden
One part Metropolis, one part Bonnie & Clyde, just a touch of Bride of Frankenstein and yet somehow entirely writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s own, The Bride! deserves that exclamation point.
Jessie Buckley is a force of nature in a dual role—sort of a triple role, really: an unhappy Chicago gangster’s moll; Mary Shelley, silenced far too soon; and a monster, chaotic, unruly, unburdened by memory and guided by peculiar fury.
The likeliest lock for Oscar in the 2026 race for her breathtaking turn in Hamnet, Buckley is perfectly paired with Christian Bale (that hack!), a unique image of Frankenstein’s monster. He is tender, lonesome, adoring, and very anxious. Frank has a serious anxiety issue, which is mainly calmed by watching his favorite movie star, the song and dance man Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal).
To watch Buckley and Bale, two masters of their craft, work off each other is a treat, each of them tearing through Gyllenhaal’s inspired and intelligent script with dark joy.
The leads are surrounded with memorable, noir-esque characters: Annette Bening as our mad scientist, Peter Sarsgaard as the gumshoe with some secrets, Penélope Cruz as the brains behind the investigation, John Magaro as the spineless gangster.
Great as they are, and they all are, the star here is Maggie Gyllenhaal. Her tale is hyperliterate with surreal flourishes, dazzlingly filmed, constantly surprising and yet charmingly inevitable, and fueled by a glorious, contagious rage.
There are dance sequences (an absolute blast) and shoot outs, a deep vein of dark humor, opportunities for redemption, and delightful easter eggs. (Ida’s nemesis is a gangster named Lupino; silver screen star Ida Lupino turned to directing, and one of her most cynical and impressive efforts was a 1963 episode of the TV show Thriller called “The Bride Who Died Twice.”)
The Bride! delights with an anarchic energy, but its underlying plot is tight, its characters clearly drawn and beautifully performed, and its aesthetic wondrous. In just her second feature, after 2021’s sublime The Lost Daughter, Gyllenhaal’s cemented her spot as one of the most exciting filmmakers working.
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