After a hundred years of loneliness, Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) turns to a mad scientist (Annette Bening) in Chicago to create a mate (Jessie Buckley) for him. After murdering some schmoes in self-defense, they go on the lam. A pair of detectives played by Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz follow in hot pursuit. Eventually, the duo becomes a sort of an undead version of Bonnie and Clyde.
Written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Bride! is a kooky but unsuccessful attempt to modernize the Frankenstein premise with contemporary mores inside of a gangster setting. I think the problem has more to do with the script than the direction as Gyllenhaal manages to carve out a few memorable sequences within the middle section of the movie. It’s just that some of the choices that were made are just… oof.
You know you’re in for it though as soon as you see the inexplicably awful prologue featuring Buckley as Mary Shelley (a nod to the 1935 original). The Bride herself ain’t much to write home about. With her schizophrenic nature and unruly behavior, this Bride seems to be an attempt by Gyllenhaal to confound expectations of the audience (mostly the males) about how the Bride should look/act. Or maybe she was trying to give a voice to the original creators who have to suffer through awful Hollywood versions of their character that they never intended. Whatever the reason, it just doesn’t work. I can’t exactly fault Buckley as she was just following the script, but the shtick of her going back and forth between the Bride and Shelley’s voice gets tiresome almost immediately. The subplot where women start cosplaying as the Bride and committing crimes is pretty dumb too. The fact that the cast is largely comprised of actors who are related to or had previously worked with Gyllenhaal is the tip-off they probably didn’t even read the script and just signed on as a favor.
Still, there are some nice moments here, most of which come from Bale. He’s one of our greatest living actors and the prospect of him playing one of the screen’s coolest characters is certainly promising. I’d say he more or less delivers what you would expect and/or hope for. Jake Gyllenhaal is also a hoot as a Fred Astaire style movie star that the monster is obsessed with. I also liked the scene where the monsters are ran out of a theater showing White Zombie (in 3-D). I wasn’t expecting the tribute to Young Frankenstein either, which was fun.
Ultimately, The Bride! never really earns its exclamation mark. You can tell it has an anarchist spirit, but it doesn’t always know how to channel it. Frankly, it’s a fucking mess. If it had been a hot mess or even a mildly entertaining one, it might’ve been worth a look. It’s just that the sparks the title character creates are few and far between.
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