“Once in a while, a film comes along that is so poorly made, so cynically inspired, that it acts as a death rattle for an entire era of film. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride is that film.” – HoldMyDualshock (26-03-16)

A lot of folks online seemed to hate this film. Not just think it wasn’t great, but downright hated it. For a multitude of reasons I missed it during its theater release, but jumped at the chance to view it when a local meetup group chose this film to discuss. By the way, the meetup group’s subtitle is “Is it Art or Is It Trash?” And yes, I knew that the film had a largely negative online review (IMDB 5.6/10 Rotten Tomatoes 57% critic score). But I wanted to go in with minimal expectations beyond the shift of emphasis from Frankenstein’s Monster to the Bride and setting in 1930s Chicago. Also, I fell in love with Jessie Buckley’s performance in Hamnet, so I hoped that this would be a worthy next performance. 

The trailer plays up the old-school Universal Horror heritage. And it’s not unusual for a film to be a blend of genres, like horror-comedy, or mystery-romance, but this one is all over the place. It begins with the voice of Mary Shelley speaking from beyond the grave lamenting that she wasn’t able to tell her whole story before brain cancer ended her days, then she begins to narrate the story of Ida, a 1930s Chicago mob call-girl, trying to survive her circumstances without attracting the wrong kind of attention. When Shelley begins to possess Ida from the grave things go badly for Ida because Shelley is done with being quiet and not loudly calling out the evil in their midst. Then cut to the Monster, Frank, visiting a Chicago doctor who has experimented with reanimating dead creatures. And Frank wants the doctor to make for him a companion from a dead female. Hang on, the dead author of the fictional work is narrating this movie and possessing a character in this world, where Frankenstein’s Monster is a real thing? Wait, what? Okay, that was a speed bump. 

The consensus of the movie meetup group was largely positive to the point where they felt like the stitched together nature of the movie was intentional, given the stitched together nature of the creature(s) at the center of the story. That’s a tad too much of an apologetic approach to me. Having done a bit more research since watching the film and the meetup group, I wonder if part of this “all over place” nature of the film could be attributed more to studio interference and Gyllenhaal not having final edit (it was mentioned in one of the reviews as a joke, but I’d love to see what the Gyllenhaal final edit would have been). 

One thing that totally pulled me out of the movie, and I know that this tends to be a “Boomer” thing, is the use of music or a musical performance that would not have happened in the era depicted in the movie. I had the same problem with “Sinners,” though in “Sinners” there was a plot specific reason for this introduction of modern forms of music. To me, it’s not only a distraction, but it could have been a unifying connecting theme to use some rebellious form of jazz for the Alley way “rave” early in the film and the “Demon-Possession” dance number later in the movie. I get that movie makers feel like they need to cater to movie-goers who don’t know any music prior to Rap, but this movie fan cannot handle musical anachronisms. And it’s not like they couldn’t have found something in the era that would also convey the sense of things spinning out of control. 

The other thing that bugged me was how easily the detectives were able to track the movements of the “monsters” as they went from city to city. If anything, in 1930s America, disappearing from one city to the next would be relatively easy, and even unsolved murders wouldn’t necessarily give away where the “Monsters” were or were heading to. 

Finally, when the “Monsters” run away from the detective after the Demon Possession dance number could have been a good place to end the film. Someone in the meetup group said that they felt like Gyllenhaal put everything and every genre into this movie because she wasn’t going to get another opportunity to make another large budget movie. That may be true and a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy, but it doesn’t excuse some of what feels like story sloppiness. This is not to say that this is a self-indulgent art-film. I’ve watched self-indulgent student-art films, where I’m arguing with the motivation and acting skill of every character onscreen. This is not that (although I do wonder why the Monsters abandon their car after the highway murder happens and they run off into a field… what?).  No, the performances and the cinematography was excellent. It’s just that the story was a bit too much all over the place, and something like a musical through line (appropriate for the era!!) might have helped pull this one together. 

Final verdict? Casual film-goers can (and did) skip this one. More serious film-fans might want to give this one a watch, just to see where state-of-the-art film making is at in 2026 and where improvements can be made. Love the idea, but the product didn’t quite land. Enjoy. JBB

[Movie viewed on BluRay on 2026-09-04]

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Tags: 2026 movies, female protagonists, Frankenstein, movie review, video Fridays

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