**Spoiler alert**

Contributor rating – 2.5/5

The Bride! is not the only Frankenstein adaptation to be released recently. It’s not the best or  the most popular. However, one superlative does apply to director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s  sophomore project: it sure is the strangest. 

Gyllenhaal sets her story a century after the events of Shelley’s original novel, loosely adapting 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein. The film continues a subplot involving Frankenstein’s Monster  begging his creator to reanimate a woman like him to be his lover. The creature (Christian  Bale)—dubbed Frank in this film—seeks the help of renowned scientist Dr. Cornelia  Euphronius (Annette Bening) to carry out this task. The pair select and revive recently  deceased Ida Bolinski (Jessie Buckley), who loses her memory upon resurrection. Thus, she believes Frank’s lie that she is his bride. 

An admittedly intriguing setup devolves into a directionless, demented version of Bonnie and  Clyde. The couple enter a deeply repetitive cycle of going somewhere, killing people, and  escaping the law. How hilariously awful they are, both to each other and their surroundings,  does create comedy. Nevertheless, some laughs here and there are not enough to carry what  is ultimately a shallow, simple storyline. Even when Frank’s lie is eventually exposed, it has  underwhelmingly little impact. Gyllenhaal’s screenplay reduces what could have been an  exciting shift in the relationship dynamics to insubstantial melodrama. 

Moreover, the film never establishes neither Bride nor Groom as characters nearly enough  beyond general derangement and debauchery. While both Buckley and Bale deliver admirably  unhinged performances, they come across as obnoxious often. Although, this is likely less  their own fault than that of the writing and directing. Indeed, the film seems more interested in  provocative, absurdist spectacle than telling its own tale. That is disappointing, both due to  how much potential the concept had and how fantastic Gyllenhaal’s character-work was with  her previous film, The Lost Daughter. 

Unlike that film, The Bride! is so jam-packed with constant content that none of it is fleshed  out enough. As another example, the pair’s pursuers, Detective Jake Wiles (Peter Saarsgard)  and Myrna Malloy (Penélope Cruz), take up significant screentime. However, they remain— ironically—so criminally underdeveloped that you must wonder what the point of their inclusion  was at all. Storylines like these that add so little could have quite easily been left on the cutting  room floor. These cuts would have allowed time to add more meat to the bones of the core  characters and storyline. 

Most questionable is the inclusion of Mary Shelley herself. The film opens on Shelley (also  played by Buckley) in the afterlife, who soon takes possession of Ida to tell the story.  Gyllenhaal attempts to add a meta level to the film, and, while conceptually interesting, it is  ultimately confusing. It is completely unclear how any of it actually works and what the film is  trying to say. The possession angle comes up infrequently enough—beyond Buckley spouting  synonyms and rhymes for no apparent reason and occasionally hearing voices from Shelley— that it has little impact on the film at all.

Unfortunately, the message becomes muddled in the mess. The Bride! sets out to be a  feminist retelling of one of the most iconic works of literature ever made, and while the goal is  admirable, the result is as black-and-white thematically as its predecessor, Bride of  Frankenstein, is visually. The central relationship says very little about gender roles in the  1930s, and what we get is far from invigorating. Furthermore, despite its aspirations of  subversiveness, the film feels strangely subdued. Albeit frustrating in its current state,  choosing to home in on Shelley’s involvement would have been far more unique. Perhaps, the  Frankenstein adaptation could have been truly great had it focused distinctly on Shelley’s  relationship with art and womanhood. Alas, it was not to be, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is no modern Prometheus. The Bride! adapts a  story of a man being cobbled together with mismatched bits and pieces where the final product  ends up disfigured, disillusioned, and all-around a bit of a mess; sadly, that’s what the film  feels like too.

Words by Isaak Hewitt

Featured image courtesy of Shivam Gosain via Unsplash. No changes have been made to this image. Image licence found here.