Review | She’s alive! Maggie Gyllenhaal gives ‘The Bride!’ a new voice

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

“The Bride!” is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second movie as a director and her first horror flick. The movie came out in March 2026 with a star-studded cast — Oscar-winner Jessie Buckley among them. This project takes the Bride of Frankenstein and reimagines her story with a fresh and modern twist. 

The Bride of Frankenstein has been an elusive character in the world of literary fiction long before James Whale created the character for his 1935 movie. In her novel “Frankenstein,” Mary Shelley’s monster begs his creator for a partner that he can love and spend his life with but is denied his wish. In Whale’s movie, The Bride appears for less than 10 minutes of screen time and has no dialogue. In the decades following the initial film, more iterations of The Bride have been portrayed, but none do a very good job of telling this undead woman’s story. 

Maggie Gyllenhaal attempts to give this character a chance to tell her own story in her film — “The Bride!” Gyllenhaal takes Mary Shelley’s story and characters to places they have never been before. The film is set in 1930s Chicago, when the city was full of gangs and crime, and opens with an introduction by the film’s narrator, Mary Shelley herself, portrayed by Buckley. Shelley then prepares the viewer for what she claims is a scarier sequel to her first novel that will finally tell the story of Frankenstein’s female companion. Our main character and mob girl, Ida, also portrayed by Buckley, is introduced and almost immediately killed by her gangster boyfriend and his friend. 

A lonely and heartbroken Frankenstein’s monster, portrayed by Christian Bale, is luckily in Chicago at this time, looking for a mad scientist to aid him in creating a female companion. The two of them dig up Ida’s body and spark her back to life in typical Mary Shelley fashion — storm and all. After she regains consciousness, she quickly rejects her role as a passive bride made solely for companionship. She instead forms her own bold and rebellious identity, while forming a bond with her groom, who she calls Frankie. The two of them eventually go on the run, leaving behind a trail of chaos and crime. Throughout their journey, the couple visits movie theaters and inspires rebellion in other women throughout the nation. As they gain notoriety, their relationship evolves beyond just love or companionship — the two of them become symbols for freedom and defiance. They are eventually caught and killed in Chicago, but the movie ends with Frankie and Ida being revived once again by their crazy doctor with the help of the movie’s lead detective. 

I have seen a lot of criticism and negative reviews for this movie, claiming that it weighs itself down and falls flat with too many plotlines and flair, but I will have to respectfully disagree. “The Bride!” might not be an intense think piece on how female characters are treated in the media, but it’s still a fun and entertaining watch that — despite some cringy dialogue — is worth the two-hour runtime. Buckley and Bale deliver performances that are incredibly complementary of each other, with Buckley’s loud and over-the-top portrayal of The Bride and Bale’s portrayal of stoic, dancing and film-obsessed Frankenstein’s monster. Watching them interact and learn more about each other and themselves was heart-warming. It felt like Shelley’s monster finally got to experience love, even if it was crazy and dangerous. We finally see him feel like he belongs with someone else in the world, no longer the only one of his kind. As a big fan of Frankenstein and all of its iterations, I really enjoyed this addition. 

The movie was perfectly indulgent, violent and wild — I was on the edge of my seat for most of it, rooting for two undead criminals in campy outfits driving around in cool, stolen cars. “The Bride!” had all of the magic that a movie should have. Gyllenhaal leans into a sense of theatricality, not shying away from the weirdness but fully embracing it as something freeing and joyful. It’s really refreshing when a movie doesn’t try to smooth out its artistic edges to try to make itself more “respectable,” especially when the main characters are as chaotic and unruly as Ida and Frankie.

What struck me the most wasn’t the spectacle, but the tenderness underlying the whole movie. Ida continuously refusing to be defined by the role that she was created to fill feels personal and symbolic of a bigger kind of rejection. It was an invitation for all women to reject the roles expected of them by society and be exactly who they want to be. And Frankie, although he is literally stitched together and often silent, ends up being the most human part of the story, with a deep longing for connection and purpose. These two have an incredibly messy and chaotic relationship whose sincerity sneaks up on you. 

At the end of the day, “The Bride!” might not be the movie for everyone, and I can understand why some people didn’t like it. But to me, this movie felt alive in a way that a lot of movies lack nowadays. It’s weird, it’s messy, but Gyllenhaal, her cast and her crew are completely committed to the vision, and that’s exactly what I wanted out of this movie.