You know how you cannot help but be influenced by social media about movies? You try to avoid spoilers, plot details, cast, even forming an early opinion based on reviews? Well, the reviews of The Bride! were everywhere, and they were not good.
I had heard/read it was terrible, but I still went in with an open mind. The Bride! was another movie to review, I was determined to do my best to be open-minded and honest.
The Bride! stars Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening, Penelope Cruz, Peter Saragaard, Jake Gyllenhaal, and John Magaro. Maggie Gyllenhaal is the writer and director.
The Story
The story of The Bride! is more of a follow-up on Mary Shelley’s original Frankenstein.
In 1930s Chicago, Frankenstein asks Dr. Euphronius to help create a companion. They give life to a murdered woman as the Bride, sparking romance, police interest, and radical social change.
I will be breaking down the entire story, which will contain spoilers, but that’s because I’m doing you a favour.
We open with Buckley playing Shelley, telling us how Frankenstein wasn’t all of the story and that if she told the rest of the story, it would have been too horrific for everyone. Well, she wasn’t wrong.
Shelley tells the story of Ida in 1930s Chicago. ‘Somehow’, Shelley can tell the story of what happened in the future, many years after her own death.
Ida is an oppressed woman in a male-dominated world. She is at a fancy restaurant and being groped by men, oppressed by men, and generally #MeToo’d all over the place.
Unfortunately, she’s got a mouth on her, and it gets her into trouble. So much so, she’s thrown down some stairs out the back, and is killed with a broken neck.
One Thing On His Mind
We then meet Frank, well, the monster (Bale), who’s looking for a doctor to make him a bride. When he meets Dr Euphronious (Bening), he’s basically begging for a wife, because he wants to have sex.
In fact, there is a scene where he screams that he needs a bride. It’s the 1930s, and Pornhub hasn’t been invented yet. It’s good to know, though, that when Dr Frankenstein recreated the monster, he took the time to sew his willy back on.
Not only that, but it was all in full working order. #ThingsYouDidntNeedToKnow
Dr Euphronious says she can help, and they dig up Ida. The doc says she’s too beautiful to be reanimated, which was an odd thing to say. Anyway, ‘somehow’ the doc manages to bring Ida back to life. It’s basically as easy as plugging her in, and you’re golden.
Help Meat
Ida comes back to life, with no memory of what happened. Frank (the monster) says she’s a perfect bride, to which she says:
“Bride, you mean help maid, you mean help meat!”
Yes, being a bride is like being ‘help meat’, nothing but a subservient helper, for a man’s every whim.
Franke and the Bride end up in a 1930s disco grunge club; let that sink in for a moment. Everyone there is a freak by modern TikTok standards. They look perfectly normal, but to anyone with an IQ over room temperature, they are a freak.
This entire thing was weird. Frank goes around with a face covering because of all the scars. He can’t find a wife, because of it, but I couldn’t help thinking that, in this grunge club, he could have easily found a freak willing to give him a quickie.
That’s beside the point; the plot needs to happen.
In the club, while, umm, ‘dancing’, the bride starts to get groped, because ‘men’, and they end up killing two men in an alley. Someone also manages to snap a couple of photos of them. Yes, there was ‘somehow’ someone with a 1930s camera, in an alleyway, just snapping away. #Instagram1930Style
Men Really Are Bad
Frank is obsessed with Ronnie Reed (Gyllenhall), a ‘Fred Astaire’ type movie star. They go to the cinema to watch a movie, where a girl is being sexually assaulted by a man. The bride steps in, and they have to go on the run from the po po.
The police are made up of Skarsgaard and Cruz. Guess which one solves the crime and saves the day at the end of the movie? Answers on a postcard, attached with a cheque of £50 to Boba Phil, care of the Last Movie Outpost.
They end up in a fancy club and run into Reed in person. Frank goes to meet him, but Reed is rude to him, so he just walks away?
No, Frank takes to the dance floor and basically does the scene from Young Frankenstein. I kid you not, the music is Putting on the Ritz, and Frank shouts ‘Putting on the Ritz’, in a Peter Boyle fashion, at one point.
You can hear that gif.
I was genuinely shocked at the level of stupidity. If you know Young Frankenstein and that musical number, it takes you right out of The Bride! for a moment. I guess the good thing is, the target audience for this movie wouldn’t watch a movie in black and white, so they probably don’t know the reference.
The bride joins in the dance, then everyone in the club does. This movie is based on some kind of reality, but ‘somehow’, everyone in the club knows the dance routine. I used that term loosely; it’s more like ‘having a fit to music’.
Killing Cops Is A Turn On
The police turn up at the club and start shooting; America, right? She shoots a cop, they get away, and finally have sex. Nothing turns a woman on more than killing a cop. They should have their honeymoon at a police academy.
And just to warn you, about a movie you’ll never watch, that in the ‘love scene’, she licks his stitches. Again, nothing turns a woman on more than scars from where you were sewn together after death. A second honeymoon could be at a mortuary.
The incident at the nightclub ‘somehow’ sparks a women’s revolution. All women start to paint their faces and go around shooting people. Which is a good thing, right? The revolution is called ‘Brain Attack’, which would be ironic if it were well written. #ChicksWithGuns
It’s The 1930s, Remember
There’s a conversation between Skarsgaard and Cruz, about the oppression of women and blah blah blah. Skarsgaard says that the bride could have had a better influence on women if she weren’t a psycho.
He says it could inspire women to become astronauts, brain surgeons, or detectives. Before correcting himself, he completely forgot that Cruz is a female detective.
Where did he get the idea of a female astronaut from? The space race didn’t start for another 30 years. Also, remember that this is Shelley telling the story, a few hundred years before the space race.
Cruz goes off to save the day, she’s ignored by policeMEN, but it’s OK, the female secretary helps her out. #SistersAreDoingItForEachOther
While on the run, a male cop pulls over the bride and sexually assaults her with poems. I can’t even be bothered to explain. It also turns out that Skarsgaard has slept with Ida at some point. What are the chances?
I forgot how the conversation gets here (I had checked out by now), but it turns out that after the Bonnie and Clyde rampage, the bride doesn’t want to be a bride. She ain’t gonna be any man’s woman. #WomensChoice
She also spouts ‘Me too’ a few times as well. #MeToo is sooooo five years ago.
Out Of Nowhere, An Assassin
Some mob leader wants the bride dead. I missed why, but he’s important for later. Frank dies, the bride wants him back, and Dr Euphronious can’t do it now. Let’s see, a dead body buried a couple of days ago with a broken neck; easy fix. Man died hours ago of a single bullet wound; it’s hopeless, utterly hopeless.
While the doc and the bride are having a moment, the assassin turns up and shoots Ida. Bloody good timing too, since all the male cops turn up and shot her as well. Why use one bullet when 5,000 will do the job?
Cruz stops the shooting when the men finally listen to her. The assassin is arrested, and a woman saves the day! #YayWomen
The closing credit song is the Monster Mash, again, I kid you not.
There’s an end-credit scene where the women with ‘brain attack’ are going to kill the mob leader from earlier. They do this while Sarsgaard watches, because women can do whatever the hell they like without worrying about the consequences.
The Cast
Finally, let’s talk about the movie. The story is complete and utter garbage, written for feminists from 5 years ago. The cast, however, is not bad. Buckley deserves an Oscar for her performance, given the script she had to work with. She is really good, but no one could have made this script work.
Bale again is really good. I would l have loved to see him playing the monster in a ‘good’ Frankenstein adaptation, it would have been interesting. Although I wouldn’t have wanted to see him going around just trying to get his leg over. That would have been weird, oh wait, that’s the story they went with.
I really felt for Gyllenhaal, Jake that is, not Maggie; she brought this on herself. Chances are Maggie said she was going to direct, and her dad told her to include her brother, like going to a party and having you bring your annoying sibling.
I get the impression that everyone involved in this movie heard Maggie was writing and directing and signed on. This was before they read the script. When the movie started shooting, it was too late to politely decline.
The Direction
The Bride! is overly arthouse. I mean, there must have been a time when they knew GDT was making a Frankenstein movie and wanted to take it in a different direction. It’s a pity they turned around and took it in completely the opposite direction, away from good.
Overall, I liked the direction; there are some shots and ideas that really work. It’s along the line of early Lynch in places. That kind of thing worked in The Elephant Man, but then the story for that movie was brilliant.
The main issue with The Bride! is that the story is already outdated. Saying that, it’s not even good for the #MeToo era.
Overall
As you might have guessed by now, The Bride! is one of the worst movies of 2026. There are good performances, there is good direction, but the story is far too overpowering for it to be enjoyed on any level. There’s probably a handful of feminist students who ‘really identify’ with The Bride!, but they are also the kind of person you see on social media and quickly find something else to watch.
The movie has ‘the message’ dialled up to 11. I have read a couple of people online who loved it, but I also completely understand why; they are mostly people still using pronouns in their bio.
I’m not sure what the main message of the movie was. Killing cops is fine as long as they are men? It’s OK to join a revolution, as long as men are the victims?
I loved how all the ‘brain attack’ women all painted their faces like the bride’s face thing. It’s like Maggie was hoping to have everyone copy it for Halloween, like Robbie’s Harlequin. I don’t see anyone 1. doing the face thing, 2. finding it hot.
The Bride! is one of the worst things I’ve seen, probably ever. I will be using it as a benchmark: “This is a bad movie, but not as bad as The Bride!” Zero stars.
The Bride! is now on digital, but you have been warned.
