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[](https://girlculture.substack.com/) # [Girl Culture](https://girlculture.substack.com/) Subscribe Sign in [Movies](https://girlculture.substack.com/s/movies/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=menu) # ‘The Bride!’ is a beautiful mess ### Maggie Gyllenhaal’s sophomore feature swings for the fences [](https://substack.com/@carolinesiede) [Caroline Siede](https://substack.com/@carolinesiede) Mar 07, 2026 12 4 Share [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hlqP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdfdc7712-5d55-41aa-a88a-6fe6541886ad_1296x730.jpeg) Photos: Warner Bros. *Welcome to [Girl Culture](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/welcome-to-girl-culture), the newsletter where Caroline Siede examines pop culture, feminism, and more. This review is free but to get the full Girl Culture experience (including my brand new [rom-com column](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/my-new-rom-com-column-kicks-off-with)!), you can become a [paid subscriber](https://girlculture.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=postcta).* There’s only so much corpse reanimation the world can handle at one time. So when *The Bride\!* moved its release date from fall 2025 to March 2026, it seemed likely that it didn’t want to debut directly alongside Guillermo del Toro’s *Frankenstein*. But what’s funny is that it’s now premiering right on the heels of Emerald Fennell’s *[“Wuthering Heights”](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/wuthering-heights-is-for-the-teenage)*—a movie that actually shares much more of its DNA. Both are maximalist features from female auteurs who are as interested in our cultural connection to a shared text as to the authenticity of that text itself. Both are in-your-face about what they want to say. And both are supremely messy in a way that’s as frustrating as it is kind of admirable. In our current formula-driven, ever shrinking era of Hollywood filmmaking, it’s exciting that “big swing” studio cinema still exists, particularly when female filmmakers are the ones behind it. And while I can’t say *The Bride\!* is exactly for me, I’m glad that I saw it and even more glad that I now get to read what I’m sure will be deeply divided reactions to the big, bold, overtly feminist aims of writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal. I’m not convinced *The Bride\!* is a movie that actually has anything to say, and yet it boasts a sense of stylish confidence that makes it undeniably memorable too. [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!4ZmR!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff2e99ab9-8b94-45f5-8ccc-a0bc351c22d2_1440x810.jpeg) That starts with the audacious choice to weave *Frankenstein* author Mary Shelley herself into this story. Played by Jessie Buckley—who will soon go on to portray the titular Bride of Frankenstein as well—this bitter, ghostly apparition has a lot of opinions about what she was and wasn’t allowed to say in her genre-defining 1818 novel. Now she’s here to craft a sequel by slipping into the mind of a 1930s gangster’s moll named Ida (also Buckley) and steering her towards her own undead saga. It’s an insane, inspired, potentially insulting framing device—one that shifts the story’s central creation myth from an act of mad science to an act of female authorship. Unfortunately, it’s also one of about 37 different plot threads and themes that Gyllenhaal is interested in exploring. *The Bride\!* belongs to the genre of “more is more” cinema, where the script keeps piling on characters and ideas and motifs until the film feels ready to burst at its stapled seams. The biggest throughline is about patriarchal abuse. Even before she’s brought back to life, Ida is mistreated by her gangster boss and his various lackeys. And once she re-emerges as a confidently undead mistress, she’s frequently attacked by the kind of cartoonishly evil men who commit public assaults in Hollywood movies. Though she wakes up without her memories, it doesn’t take her long to realize that patriarchy sucks and violence may be the only way to solve it. Yet *The Bride\!* is also interested in powerful women too—not just Shelley and Ida, but also mad scientist Dr. Cornelia Euphronious (a wacky Annette Bening); clever but underestimated investigator Myrna Malloy (a scene-stealing Penélope Cruz); and a whole ensemble of women who take inspiration from Ida’s rebellious behavior to form their own copycat vigilante group. Not content with just those two throughlines, however, Gyllenhaal is also interested in men who exist in a sort of in-between space of patriarchy—like Myrna’s supportive but flawed boss Detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard), who joins her on her quest to hunt down Ida. [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1I0L!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F749ad271-f677-48e3-8a6a-06bdabf23ca8_1200x783.jpeg) Plus, there’s Frankenstein a.k.a. Frank (Christian Bale), who has sympathetic aims for wanting a bride after 200 years of loneliness and yet less than ideal means of lying to Ida about the fact that she’s his amnesiac fiancée rather than a corpse he selected to bring back to life. The heart of *The Bride\!* is a sweet, complicated love story about two weirdos finding each other. Still, that doesn’t stop Gyllenhaal from making huge swaths of the movie a love letter to classic Hollywood too—from overt homages to *Bonnie and Clyde* and *Young Frankenstein* to the fact that Frank soothes himself by disappearing into the cinematic worlds of his favorite soft-shoeing movie star, Ronnie Reed (a charming Jake Gyllenhaal). It’s a lot to take in, especially when it’s hard to tell whether Gyllenhaal’s vision is actually overflowing with ideas or if the hodge-podge quality is the result of a film that was cut up and cobbled together during test screenings and reshoots. Much of *The Bride\!* is choppy and disconnected. It can be hard to track what’s happening from scene to scene, which leaves Buckley’s titular heroine oddly underexplored. Plotwise, she claims a lot of agency. Emotionally, she dances across the spectrum from debauchery to rage. Yet she never actually gets much depth or interiority. Though she’s ostensibly searching for her identity, her personality remains reactionary. That leaves *The Bride\!* as more of a visceral sensory experience than anything else—part *Chicago,* part *Joker,* part steampunk Baz Luhrmann. Despite the messiness, there’s a palpable sense that everyone from the costume and production designers to Gyllenhaal and her cast had an absolute blast making this movie, which translates to a certain kind of zest and zeal onscreen. Bale is allowed to uncork his underappreciated sense of sweetness; Buckley deploys a sly charm and an admirable commitment to the movie’s biggest swings; and The Bride’s ink-stained makeup and shock-haired styling deliver one of the chicest monster looks in cinematic history. [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7hQq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe4c90c94-f639-4875-b7ff-79de63db1baa_1296x730.jpeg) There are dance numbers and screwball comedy pastiches and a couple of needledrops that suggest perhaps Gyllenhaal doesn’t mean for any of this to actually be taken quite so seriously. The film’s action and musical setpieces have a sumptuous, decadent quality, not to mention a touch of nihilism that feels as relevant to today as it does to the 1930s. Though *The Bride\!* is frequently messy and sometimes kind of baffling, it’s never boring. If it’s a failure, it’s an interesting one, which is perhaps better than being a staid success. Gyllenhaal may not have made a movie that’s particularly cohesive, but at least *The Bride\!* feels alive. **Grade: C+** **[You can read more of my thoughts in my A.V. Club essay “The Bride! mistakes female rage for female depth”](https://www.avclub.com/the-bride-feminism-failure-identity)** #### More from Girl Culture [](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/why-are-men-obsessed-with-women-obsessed) [Why are men obsessed with women obsessed with ‘Heated Rivalry’?](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/why-are-men-obsessed-with-women-obsessed) [Caroline Siede](https://substack.com/profile/109519567-caroline-siede) · Mar 3 [Read full story](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/why-are-men-obsessed-with-women-obsessed) [](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/wuthering-heights-is-for-the-teenage) [“Wuthering Heights” is for the teenage fangirl in all of us](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/wuthering-heights-is-for-the-teenage) [Caroline Siede](https://substack.com/profile/109519567-caroline-siede) · Feb 9 [Read full story](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/wuthering-heights-is-for-the-teenage) [](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/every-thought-i-had-watching-bridgerton) [Every thought I had watching ‘Bridgerton’ season four](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/every-thought-i-had-watching-bridgerton) [Caroline Siede](https://substack.com/profile/109519567-caroline-siede) · Jan 29 [Read full story](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/every-thought-i-had-watching-bridgerton) 12 4 Share Previous #### Discussion about this post Comments Restacks [](https://substack.com/profile/79523391-emily-savage?utm_source=comment) [Emily Savage](https://substack.com/profile/79523391-emily-savage?utm_source=substack-feed-item) [4d](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/the-bride-is-a-beautiful-mess/comment/224673613 "Mar 8, 2026, 5:14 AM") I agree with your assessment for the most part, but want to add that it had a fantastic setup with a disappointing execution. The concept of a world where Frankenstein happened, the monster is alive and reading scientific articles, and goes to meet a scientist who has recreated Frankestein’s methods on animals (and later, we find out at the very end, people) based on his abandoned notes—that could have been an amazing film. I don’t think the Mary Shelley plot line was even necessary, and it felt like it was trying to emulate Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. If anything, it made it harder to develop the Bride as a character because she was constantly dealing with what was ostensibly a possession that obscured her own character. I think if it had been cut, a lot of the film’s issues would be solved. [Reply]() [Share]() [3 replies by Caroline Siede and others](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/the-bride-is-a-beautiful-mess/comment/224673613) [3 more comments...](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/the-bride-is-a-beautiful-mess/comments) Top Latest Discussions No posts ### Ready for more? © 2026 Caroline Siede · [Privacy](https://substack.com/privacy) ∙ [Terms](https://substack.com/tos) ∙ [Collection notice](https://substack.com/ccpa#personal-data-collected) [Start your Substack](https://substack.com/signup?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_content=footer) [Get the app](https://substack.com/app/app-store-redirect?utm_campaign=app-marketing&utm_content=web-footer-button) [Substack](https://substack.com/) is the home for great culture This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please [turn on JavaScript](https://enable-javascript.com/) or unblock scripts

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hlqP!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fdfdc7712-5d55-41aa-a88a-6fe6541886ad_1296x730.jpeg) Photos: Warner Bros. *Welcome to [Girl Culture](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/welcome-to-girl-culture), the newsletter where Caroline Siede examines pop culture, feminism, and more. This review is free but to get the full Girl Culture experience (including my brand new [rom-com column](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/my-new-rom-com-column-kicks-off-with)!), you can become a [paid subscriber](https://girlculture.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=postcta).* There’s only so much corpse reanimation the world can handle at one time. So when *The Bride\!* moved its release date from fall 2025 to March 2026, it seemed likely that it didn’t want to debut directly alongside Guillermo del Toro’s *Frankenstein*. But what’s funny is that it’s now premiering right on the heels of Emerald Fennell’s *[“Wuthering Heights”](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/wuthering-heights-is-for-the-teenage)*—a movie that actually shares much more of its DNA. Both are maximalist features from female auteurs who are as interested in our cultural connection to a shared text as to the authenticity of that text itself. Both are in-your-face about what they want to say. And both are supremely messy in a way that’s as frustrating as it is kind of admirable. In our current formula-driven, ever shrinking era of Hollywood filmmaking, it’s exciting that “big swing” studio cinema still exists, particularly when female filmmakers are the ones behind it. And while I can’t say *The Bride\!* is exactly for me, I’m glad that I saw it and even more glad that I now get to read what I’m sure will be deeply divided reactions to the big, bold, overtly feminist aims of writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal. I’m not convinced *The Bride\!* is a movie that actually has anything to say, and yet it boasts a sense of stylish confidence that makes it undeniably memorable too. [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!4ZmR!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff2e99ab9-8b94-45f5-8ccc-a0bc351c22d2_1440x810.jpeg) That starts with the audacious choice to weave *Frankenstein* author Mary Shelley herself into this story. Played by Jessie Buckley—who will soon go on to portray the titular Bride of Frankenstein as well—this bitter, ghostly apparition has a lot of opinions about what she was and wasn’t allowed to say in her genre-defining 1818 novel. Now she’s here to craft a sequel by slipping into the mind of a 1930s gangster’s moll named Ida (also Buckley) and steering her towards her own undead saga. It’s an insane, inspired, potentially insulting framing device—one that shifts the story’s central creation myth from an act of mad science to an act of female authorship. Unfortunately, it’s also one of about 37 different plot threads and themes that Gyllenhaal is interested in exploring. *The Bride\!* belongs to the genre of “more is more” cinema, where the script keeps piling on characters and ideas and motifs until the film feels ready to burst at its stapled seams. The biggest throughline is about patriarchal abuse. Even before she’s brought back to life, Ida is mistreated by her gangster boss and his various lackeys. And once she re-emerges as a confidently undead mistress, she’s frequently attacked by the kind of cartoonishly evil men who commit public assaults in Hollywood movies. Though she wakes up without her memories, it doesn’t take her long to realize that patriarchy sucks and violence may be the only way to solve it. Yet *The Bride\!* is also interested in powerful women too—not just Shelley and Ida, but also mad scientist Dr. Cornelia Euphronious (a wacky Annette Bening); clever but underestimated investigator Myrna Malloy (a scene-stealing Penélope Cruz); and a whole ensemble of women who take inspiration from Ida’s rebellious behavior to form their own copycat vigilante group. Not content with just those two throughlines, however, Gyllenhaal is also interested in men who exist in a sort of in-between space of patriarchy—like Myrna’s supportive but flawed boss Detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard), who joins her on her quest to hunt down Ida. [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!1I0L!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F749ad271-f677-48e3-8a6a-06bdabf23ca8_1200x783.jpeg) Plus, there’s Frankenstein a.k.a. Frank (Christian Bale), who has sympathetic aims for wanting a bride after 200 years of loneliness and yet less than ideal means of lying to Ida about the fact that she’s his amnesiac fiancée rather than a corpse he selected to bring back to life. The heart of *The Bride\!* is a sweet, complicated love story about two weirdos finding each other. Still, that doesn’t stop Gyllenhaal from making huge swaths of the movie a love letter to classic Hollywood too—from overt homages to *Bonnie and Clyde* and *Young Frankenstein* to the fact that Frank soothes himself by disappearing into the cinematic worlds of his favorite soft-shoeing movie star, Ronnie Reed (a charming Jake Gyllenhaal). It’s a lot to take in, especially when it’s hard to tell whether Gyllenhaal’s vision is actually overflowing with ideas or if the hodge-podge quality is the result of a film that was cut up and cobbled together during test screenings and reshoots. Much of *The Bride\!* is choppy and disconnected. It can be hard to track what’s happening from scene to scene, which leaves Buckley’s titular heroine oddly underexplored. Plotwise, she claims a lot of agency. Emotionally, she dances across the spectrum from debauchery to rage. Yet she never actually gets much depth or interiority. Though she’s ostensibly searching for her identity, her personality remains reactionary. That leaves *The Bride\!* as more of a visceral sensory experience than anything else—part *Chicago,* part *Joker,* part steampunk Baz Luhrmann. Despite the messiness, there’s a palpable sense that everyone from the costume and production designers to Gyllenhaal and her cast had an absolute blast making this movie, which translates to a certain kind of zest and zeal onscreen. Bale is allowed to uncork his underappreciated sense of sweetness; Buckley deploys a sly charm and an admirable commitment to the movie’s biggest swings; and The Bride’s ink-stained makeup and shock-haired styling deliver one of the chicest monster looks in cinematic history. [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7hQq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe4c90c94-f639-4875-b7ff-79de63db1baa_1296x730.jpeg) There are dance numbers and screwball comedy pastiches and a couple of needledrops that suggest perhaps Gyllenhaal doesn’t mean for any of this to actually be taken quite so seriously. The film’s action and musical setpieces have a sumptuous, decadent quality, not to mention a touch of nihilism that feels as relevant to today as it does to the 1930s. Though *The Bride\!* is frequently messy and sometimes kind of baffling, it’s never boring. If it’s a failure, it’s an interesting one, which is perhaps better than being a staid success. Gyllenhaal may not have made a movie that’s particularly cohesive, but at least *The Bride\!* feels alive. **Grade: C+** **[You can read more of my thoughts in my A.V. Club essay “The Bride! mistakes female rage for female depth”](https://www.avclub.com/the-bride-feminism-failure-identity)** [](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/why-are-men-obsessed-with-women-obsessed) [](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/wuthering-heights-is-for-the-teenage) [](https://girlculture.substack.com/p/every-thought-i-had-watching-bridgerton)