Quick Review: The Bride (2026)
Maggie Gyllenhaal getting away with making a fun and entertaining big budget gothic love story
Introduction
It’s funny when we get two movies that release close to each other that cover the same intellectual property. Just a couple months ago we got GDT’s Frankenstein which is a film I love and now we have Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride as well to put in the mix. The trailers didn’t really do any favors for this film as it seemed a lot people just really didn’t care for it. However I was very intrigued by the looks of this film and I was kinda excited to check it out. I haven’t seen Maggie’s first film The Lost Daughter yet but I heard overall positive things about it. Then putting Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale in the mix really intrigued me as those are two actors I really like. I was intrigued to see what the hell this film was going to do. After watching it, The Bride is definitely doing a lot of things that might not always work in the movies favor, however there’s a chaotic nature of the movie that was fascinating to see from a studio movie that made me really like this more than some people might feel for it.
Review
The Bride follows “The Creature of Frankenstein” asking a doctor for help in making a companion for him due to his loneliness. This leads to a woman who was murdered being resurrected and given the name “The Bride”. Things do not go as planned and it leads to crazy shenanigans that they get themselves into as well as “The Bride” learning who she really is as a person.
There’s a lot that’s going on in the story of The Bride. At times it does get a bit overwhelming and I would say that not everything fully comes together. However when the film is focused on the bride and the creature, this is where the film is at its best. I think their dynamic is an interesting one to dive into and I was a fan for most of what was shown during it. I mentioned in my review of Wuthering Heights on how even though the film is diverging from the original source material, I really wished that it was at least doing things that benefited the story and making changes that worked. This movie is much different from the original source material as the bride is never resurrected, but it’s at least is trying things that are fun and not playing it safe. It’s a story that I would say for the most part peaked my interest and I liked the directions that it decides to take.
The characters of the bride and the creature are fun the follow and this is because of the fun performances from Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale. I can totally see people not liking these performances just because they are going over the top. However I was honestly fine with what they were doing here and I liked that were both hamming it up in this. Mainly with Jessie Buckley because she is definitely doing the most here. She’s technically playing multiple roles and at first it was kind jarring to watch how they decided to incorporate these multiple performances, but it worked for me by the end. Christian Bale is much more reserved here, but he gets moments to ham it up as well and I really enjoyed that. Honesty there wasn’t a performances here the really bugged me and I was fine with all of them. I think they bring life to these roles that definitely need it for what’s presented here.
Watching this film made me question how did Maggie Gyllenhaal get away with making a 80 million dollar gothic love story studio film in a complimentary way. This film is very wacky and all over the place, but I like that it does that. There’s movies out there when it’s given a crazy concept, but feels scared to go all in on it and because of that, it makes the film fall apart. With this movie however, it’s not really scared to try anything and it goes full force in what it want to accomplish and I really liked that. The movie stylistically is really cool to look at and I was a fan with the risks that it wanted to take. There’s fun cinematography, production design, costumes, and anything from the production standpoint feels like they were given free reigns to do what they wanted. It’s easy to see why people won’t like this and it is a mess, but it’s a mess that really worked for me.
As I’ve said before, there is a lot going on in this story and that does end up becoming a fault of it. The story is incorporated with a detective story where they’re trying to capture the bride and the creature and I really didn’t care for this. We follow characters that don’t feel fully fleshed out and it doesn't carry the same weight that the bride and the creature do in this story. Every time it switches to them, I didn’t care for what they were doing. It also has elements that incorporate the mob in the story that barely has anything to say about it. It gets mentioned in the beginning and doesn’t really get mentioned until the end and it felt like they had no idea what to do with this stuff. I really wish the movie was just focused on the bride and the creature because that where when the film is strongest. It doesn’t help that the film does feel like it goes much longer than it should and it feels like you could cut down a good chunk here. WIth that said, I still really enjoyed this movie and hade a good time with it.
Final Thoughts
The Bride is a fun time and at its best when it’s following the main characters in this story. I get why it’s getting divisive ratings, but I like seeing studio movies being this wacky with the material in hand and would take this over something that’s boring and playing it safe. I think Maggie Gyllenhaal and the crew of this movie deserve props for that.
Thanks for the review. I'll wait for this one.