The Bride! (2026) Review
THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
They say love comes in all shapes and sizes, Well, you’d sure be reminded of it if you met The Bride!
PLOT
The 2026 is an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that takes place in the 1930s. The spirit of Shelley has another story to tell and from the afterlife, she chooses to do so by possessing a young woman named Ida who lives in Chicago. In her first trance, she starts riffing on the criminal activities of local crime boss Vito Lupino. She would be silenced by his henchmen Clyde & James (John Magaro & Matthew Maher) who push her down a flight of stairs to her death. She would later be resurrected by Doctor Cornelia Euphronius, using her reanimation expertise as requested by the actual Frankenstein’s monster who seeks a companion after a century of loneliness. When she wakes up, she finds herself covered in permanent black ink that was part of the formula that brought her back, but she doesn’t remember who she was. Frank takes advantage of this by lying and saying she’s his bride, giving her the name of Penelope Rogers. Together, they roam the streets at night and Frank kills a few men who try to assault her. They the flee to New York via train and kill a cop that spots her mid outburst. As their trail of blood expands, the detective duo of Jake Wiles & Myrna Malloy are tasked to track them down. In New York does Frank & Penelope continue causing chaos by crashing a high class party. When Frank gets dismissed by his favorite actor Ronnie Reed, Shelley possesses Penelope again and holds the actor at gunpoint as an example to call out men for abuse against women. When she & Frank eventually leave and steal a cop car from another officer they kill, Wiles recognizes her upon tracking them to the party from a theater they previously disrupted. Their crime spree gets more and more recognized the longer they’re on the run to the point of even Lupino recognizes her too on the newspaper. He kills James for failing to silence her and sends James to try again. Ironically, Malloy establishes a connection that the murders & sightings of Frank & the bride have occurred in locations were Ronnie Reed’s movies were shot. When she and Wiles track them down to Niagara Falls, the latter confronts Penelope and explains they were once lovers as she was gathering information on him being under Lupino’s payroll. Overwhelmed of the revelation, she chooses to shoot at his foot which gives her and Frank another chance to retreat. By morning, Wiles tells Malloy that they were planning to take down Lupino together and picks her as his replacement upon retirement. When at a drive in theater, Frank tells Penelope how he found her. As he apologizes for lying to her, he still professes his love for her. Just when he does so, he is fatally shot by Clyde. Penelope takes him back to Cornelia, pleading to bring him back the way she was, but she refuses to do so because it backfired so bad in reanimating her husband that she had to kill him. Clyde would follow and shoot Penelope as well. With Malloy following as well, she is able to have him arrested. However, she and the spirit of Shelley encourage Euphronius to revive the reanimated couple. As it is proven to work with them holding hands upon revival, the film ends in a post credit scene revealing Lupino to be captured by rioters inspired by the Bride.
THOUGHTS
The best way to describe this movie is through Pros and Cons.
Pros: I was genuinely impressed when Maggie Gyllenhaal previously wrote and directed The Lost Daughter, so I felt game with what was to come with her interpretation of Frankenstein. I chose to accept any version of this iconic character, especially after experiencing Guillermo Del Toro’s vision in 2025. Five months later, it is a whole other ordeal. There’s not been much iterations centered on the Bride herself compared to Frankenstein’s monster, which is a shame because that character is a whole other icon. Nevertheless, this was quite an unorthodox narrative. Straight up, it’s going for a Bonnie & Clyde-like adventure and because the characters are nearly toxic give a great comparison to the Joker & Harley Quinn, which is ironic not off of Hildur Guðnadottir having a chilling score, but the fact Folie á Deux didn’t connect with the majority either. There is a lot going for it though with loud cinematography by Lawrence Sher and rapid editing by Dylan Tichenor making it clear how there is such anxiousness going on surrounding two people become one. And yes, the production/costume design in stellar for the 30s aesthetic. I think what Gyllenhaal was going for was its own twisted take on the importance to reclaim your identity for that external control because the last thing you need, especially in a women’s case, is to let another decide your fate. This is the case when following such a compelling lead. Fresh off of dominating awards season with Hamnet, Jessie Buckley was on a whole other element here going from the possessive Shelley to rebellious Ida that is so unhinged you can’t look away. It’s definitely unconventional that Shelley would possess her to give a story for the ages, but it sure worked because with all the mayhem she unleashed, it inspires others to do the same as vigilant as possible. Little would she think she found an equal that never intended to bring that part out of herself. In my experience, you can’t go wrong with Christian Bale no matter the script’s quality and it’s no exception as Frank himself, becoming just as transformative as Buckley when it comes to ecstatic makeup. Like any other version before, he’s quite alone after years of solitude and thought companionship would erase all the loneliness he went through. It was definitely wrong of him to lie when he could’ve been upfront on how he found Ida. He chose not to because he couldn’t take the risk of being alone after going out of his way to bring her back for his gain. Before he caves with the absolute, they hit it off because they straight up accept each other when the rest of the world won’t. That was all needed to motivate them to live the way they want which included instilling fear to those that live off of greed. You can easily point that finger to how Zlatko Burić depicts the chilling Lupino who gets his comeuppance before anyone can say anything, but the same can be said with how Jake Gyllenhaal depicts Ronnie Reed as quite rude behind the glamour, which makes him an easy target for the bride to make an example of. If he didn’t get humiliated first, Lupino would’ve not been next in line. It did suck to see Frank & Penelope nearly die together just when they seemed to be on the same page, but at least there were few that saw they deserved another chance at life. It was definitely an interesting arc to see Peter Sarsgard portray Wiles as a more reformed figure given that someone he cared about made him step away from something he wasn’t passionate anymore. This paves the way for Penelope Cruz to shine as more composed Malloy who allows the couple to be revived because she relates to their various forms of injustice & oppression. This was her way to beat corruption and it still worked because Lupino still isn’t getting the last laugh when it’s over. Last but not least, I was really intrigued with Annette Benning as Cornelia Euphronius because she’s the one who is actually more pragmatic than intense of a mad scientist. She’s seen the ups and downs of how it affected her for her own gain which backs her hesitance in wanting to dabble with reanimation. The only reason she chooses to help Frank because getting requested by the monster himself gives the kind of validation she never thought to receive. She hesitated the second time because she didn’t want Penelope to be disappointed with the end result, but Malloy’s encouragement is enough for her to go through with it again because she too accepted they deserve to live their way. Whatever they do now in their second chance together, it’s up to them on how hard they want to be in a relationship built off of chaos. Cons: There is a lot going for this movie that I truly respect, but there were a bunch of things that didn’t make much sense when looking back on a rewatch. Like if Frank sent so many letters to Euphronius, someone who is her generation’s equivalent to Victor Frankenstein, she should’ve been entertained of either one of them letters because it’s not like there’s a hundred people claiming to be Frankenstein’s monster. Off of that, she shouldn’t be surprised he would want to dig up a body for his request to be possible. Hell, I’m surprised she doesn’t ask him what if she doesn’t want to be resurrected. Moving on, Penelope shouldn’t be surprised either for Frank to smack her when she chose to sneak up on him when sleeping. And if Frank really wanted her to be his bride, he should be dancing with her the moment she asks for it. Also if we’re gonna get into back to back odds, it’s gonna be the cops finding the same train Frank & Penelope before one lands perfectly on a rail that breaks his neck. That just breaks reality with the stupidity that the other cops don’t spot the same paper evidence Malloy finds to track them down to New York. They then get dumber to not try to take the shot on the bride when she has her gun in the air. It’s then such a trip Ida waits so long to ask for her name when that should be the first damn thing. She and Frank don’t even need to stop when another cop follows them by car because they could’ve made a break for it until they were out of gas. While it already looked like a continuity error to see Ida shoot Wiles on his foot when it looks like she aimed at his chest, I highly doubt Clyde heard Wiles exposit to Malloy his relationship to the titular lead. In short, The Bride! is a fascinating gothic tale that is able to be the dosage of unhinged romance that may be a hit or miss depending on who you ask. If monsters inside and out are your jam, check this out when you got the time.
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