It Would’ve Been Better If ‘The Bride!’ Stayed Dead

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein cinematic legacy spans over 100 years, with James Whale’s 1931 film being the first proper adaptation of the sci-fi classic. Yet that movie’s greatest legacy arguably lies in its sequel: Bride of Frankenstein.

Elsa Lancaster’s Bride created one of cinema’s most iconic images with the creation’s thundercloud hair and matching lightning streaks. It’s a phenomenal film dripping with camp and gay subtext, but it’s undoubtedly a shame that the actual title character doesn’t have much screentime.

I do not besmirch Maggie Gyllenhaal for wanting to give this character her due in a modern reimagining. But what I will besmirch her for is the result, because The Bride! is an absolute trainwreck.

The Bride! is a film doing entirely too much

It is genuinely shocking to me that this film has the same writer and director behind it as 2021’s The Lost Daughter, a genuinely solid drama that also landed Jessie Buckley her first well-deserved Oscar nomination. These two reunite for The Bride!, which has the makings of a good movie somewhere within. But unlike its title character, this film is too far gone to be brought back to life.

Frankenstein’s monster, or ‘Frank’ (Christian Bale) is lonely. After being alive for more than a century, he’s depressed that he’s still yet to experience a variety of life’s more… carnal pleasures. Thus, he seeks the help of Dr. Cornelia Euphronius (Annette Bening) to create a partner for himself – a bride to assuage his loneliness.

The pair dig up the body of a woman recently murdered by the mob and inject her with new life, and in this act she becomes The Bride (Jessie Buckley). The pair get up to some strange Bonnie and Clyde type adventures, all while running from the mob, inspiring a mass revolt among women and battling visions/possessions from… Mary Shelley herself, also played by Buckley?

To put it simply, The Bride! is a film that is doing far too much. Gyllenhaal throws a lot of ideas at the wall, but practically none of them stick. The entire affair feels less like it was created with a script but with a mood board, and the rate at which it throws new ideas at the audience is truly nauseating.

The very definition of style over substance

It also doesn’t help that most of The Bride!’s ideas are generally asinine. There are a couple of good ones, but it abandons practically everything great about the original Bride of Frankenstein or Shelley’s tale as a related text, instead opting to flaunt its surface-level aesthetics and themes.

The Bride!‘s gender politics – if you can call them that – are particularly corrosive to the final product. They feel pulled right out of 2016, with a girlboss ‘can-do’ attitude that wants to empower its female characters without ever giving them anything to do. This deeply liberal framework encapsulates the film’s unwillingness to dig below the surface of its world or characters – it’ll acknowledge the problems, but won’t really do anything about them. Despite its allusions to feminist and queer themes, the end result is surprisingly regressive.

Buckley’s Bride shares this problem – able to observe the world around her, but never truly able to dictate or come into her own from the circumstances from which she was created. I don’t really like this performance – it’s possible I sort of hated it – but the strange accent switching and ticks of the character would be hard for anyone to pull off, and I can’t besmirch Buckley for trying her damnedest to make this shocking material work.

And Jesus, the material really is bad. The Bride! regularly boggles the mind with plot threads and characters introduced so recklessly that you genuinely have to wonder if anyone edited this script before hitting record. There are nonsensical dance sequences, criminally underutilised actors and several sexual assault scenes that end with The Bride being saved by Frankenstein that further pollute the film’s failed mission to reclaim the character from her wordless appearance in the original film.

The Bride! is frustrating and shockingly regressive

It all makes The Bride!, without a doubt, one of the most befuddling and frustrating films of the year. What’s worse is that I can see a good movie in there: one that updates Bride of Frankenstein’s gender politics and queer readings for the 21st century that fully tackles the horror of being created for male companionship when you’re a person with wants and desires.

Yet that would require having actually watched James Whale’s iconic 1931 film, and based on the end results of The Bride!, I’m not entirely sure anyone involved in its production has actually done that.

★

The Bride! is in cinemas now.