'The Bride!' Review: Jessie Buckley Breathes Life into a Monstrous Mess
📖 Full Retelling
Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale play a pair of unnaturally born killers in The Bride! , a bold and busy feminist corrective to 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein , in which the title character only appears for about five minutes and speaks no dialogue. Gyllenhaal’s version of the bride, on the other hand, has a lot to say about society’s narrow expectations for women and its rejection of female autonomy. In fact, Gyllenhaal, who also wrote the script, attacks the issue from so many angles that the film often teeters on the brink of becoming a hot mess.
Entity Intersection Graph
No entity connections available yet for this article.
Original Source
'The Bride!' Review: Jessie Buckley Breathes Life into a Monstrous Mess By Mark Keizer Published Mar 4, 2026, 3:00 PM EST Mark is a long-time film critic and member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association . He's previously written film reviews for publications such as Variety , A.V. Club, Boxoffice Magazine, Cinegods and L.A. CityBeat. Mark also co-hosted the long-running Digigods podcast as well as the live-streaming film review show, Stupid for Movies. Mark is also an Emmy nominated Executive Producer. He was Executive Producer of Discovery's Josh Gates Tonight, as well as Seasons 5 and 6 of Comedy Central’s The Man Show, co-hosted by Joe Rogan. Before that Mark was Executive Producer of New Media at E! Entertaiment Television and Segment Producer for the Howard Stern Interview and the Roseanne talk show. Having been born in New York, Mark is also a lifelong New York Mets fan. Condolences are welcome. Sign in to your MovieWeb account Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale play a pair of unnaturally born killers in The Bride! , a bold and busy feminist corrective to 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein , in which the title character only appears for about five minutes and speaks no dialogue. Gyllenhaal’s version of the bride, on the other hand, has a lot to say about society’s narrow expectations for women and its rejection of female autonomy. In fact, Gyllenhaal, who also wrote the script, attacks the issue from so many angles that the film often teeters on the brink of becoming a hot mess. It speaks volumes about top-billed Jessie Buckley that, through sheer force of will, she’s able to carry this unwieldy mash-up of styles and ideas to the finish line. Because the bride functions more as the embodiment of the movie’s themes, we don't truly feel for her, but she wins our allegiance by tapping into the rage of someone who is literally brought back from the dead for the sole purpose of pleasing a man. That man is Frankenstein’s monster...
Read full article at source