Review: The Bride! (2026)

Leila Cochrane reviews Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! A campy retelling of the story of Ida, the bride to Frankenstein's Monster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhgcUArO3Uo

If you haven't heard of Maggie Gyllenhaal's film ‘The Bride', you should take note.

A feminist reimagining of the original 1935 cinematic release of "Bride of Frankenstein" by James Whale, The Bride! gives life to the monster's 'girlfriend', named Ida, played by Jessie Buckley. Under director Maggie Gyllenhaal's vision, The Bride! takes place in 1930s Chicago, stealing style from the likes of Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Poor Things (2023) and The Joker (2019).

First of all, you can tell Gyllenhaal had a lot she wanted to achieve in her 2-hour runtime.

Mary Shelley, also played by Jessie Buckley, possesses a young Ida, who, after being murdered, is resurrected by 'Frank' and loses her memory. Frank convinces Ida she is his bride, and the two take off as outlaw runaways to New York after murdering two thugs.

I was a fan of Gyllenhaal's meta-theatrical attempt to reclaim the story of Mary Shelley, who says she has one more story to tell after 'Frankenstein', and uses Ida to reclaim the autonomy of herself and the young Chicagoan woman. Unfortunately, at times, the themes are so apparent that the characters explicitly state them, which can make the experience unpleasant and detract from the subtlety that is often necessary for more profound engagement with the narrative.

The film's tone is a significant issue, as it alternates between being excessively campy, making it difficult to watch, and being overly serious, which leads to questioning world-building. Gyllenhaal, unfortunately, struggles to balance the vastly different tones, which leads to me being taken away from the story by the polarising and out-of-character responses to the events within. 

There's a real 'Bonnie and Clyde' feel to The Bride, which lends to its aesthetic. (Image: Warner Bros Discovery.)

‘The Bride!’ also failed to write the female side characters with depth and nuance, and they all served the same purpose: to show the audience that the women were the ones really in charge. Unfortunately, the reveals were merely winks to the audience, winks that failed to allow the story to explore the real-world hardships of being women in positions where they are disrespected and unheard.

I also wasn't a giant fan of the concept of 'a woman is brought back from death with no recollection of her life before passing away, and her first instinct in the face of trouble is sex’. It's a similar issue I also had with ‘Poor Things', where the filmmakers cannot decide whether they want to infantilise their female characters or sexualise them. Ida awakens with no recollection of her name, her family, or her friends, yet somehow knows, "Sex helps with sleep."

However, I believe this film suffers most from sequel fatigue, where all that we are getting are biopics/biopic-adjacent films, adaptations, remakes, and sequels. And this is extremely prevalent within ‘The Bride!’, which feels as though it is just a collection of references erratically thrown together. The references failed to work cohesively and instead felt like 'Here's a reference to a musical' and 'Now here's a film noir reference.' 

‘The Bride!’ has been hailed as a ‘love letter to cinema', but the only way I could see this remark as true is if you were to watch the film solely for its aesthetic; The Bride! doesn't have much original storytelling to call its own.

I went into the film expecting to be blown away; however, somewhere along the lines, it became clunky, losing the narrative flow and emotional depth that I had anticipated. The film ultimately was still fun and bold, and I do hope that Hollywood continues to make more experimental films.

5/10