‘The Bride!’ Is a Monster Mash-Up of Sex, Violence, Resistance, and Ideas. Many, Many Ideas

Movie Review ‘The Bride!’ Is a Monster Mash-Up of Sex, Violence, Resistance, and Ideas. Many, Many Ideas Maggie Gyllenhaal's radical take on the Bride of Frankenstein story takes a stitched-up middle finger to the patriarchy. Also: Gangsters! And musical numbers! By David Fear David Fear Contact David Fear on X View all posts by David Fear March 5, 2026 He’s a reanimated corpse, cursed to wander the land in a state of existential misery for centuries! She’s a former moll for a two-bit gangster, brought back from the dead to become his soulmate! You could say they’re made for each other — literally, in her case. Not that this young woman with a serious bone to pick with the patriarchy had much of a choice in the matter. Her would-be groom and his doctor friend dug her up, enlisted a scientist to pump thousand of volts of electricity through her, and now they simply expect her to play house for all of eternity? Fuck that! Doesn’t she have a say in any of this? Why, it’s enough to make a once-dead, now alive again and extremely angry lady start a revolution and burn the whole rotten, sexist infrastructure to the ground. The Bride! — Maggie Gyllenhaal’s radical, fit-to-burst take on The Bride of Frankenstein — is, at its molten core, all about agency. Who gets it, who doesn’t, and how so much of it seems to run across chromosome-based lines. It’s also about the joys of true partnership, and the need to be taken on your own terms or not be taken at all. And the concept of the outlaw couple, and how that everlasting cliché of lovers on the lam has become part of our nation’s collective pop mythology. And about reclaiming Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s legacy from the male-dominated canon. And about the infinite pleasure of watching actors in 1930s swells-and-dames cosplay. And the joys of old-timey musical numbers — who doesn’t like old-timey musical numbers? And… and… There are a lot of ideas jockeying for space and oxygen in The Bride! ‘s two-hour-plus running time, and ...