🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 17 (from laksa104)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa017.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.azfamily.com/2026/03/05/bride-review-this-is-one-wedding-youll-want-skip/\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.azfamily.com/2026/03/05/bride-review-this-is-one-wedding-youll-want-skip/\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/03\/05\/bride-review-this-is-one-wedding-youll-want-skip\/","crawl_time":1776105279,"first_indexed_time":1772725094,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,azfamily!www,\/2026\/03\/05\/bride-review-this-is-one-wedding-youll-want-skip\/ s443","src_root_hash":"14674818445407702817","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Movie Review: The Bride!","meta_descriptions":["Part 'Bonnie and Clyde', part 'Joker', all nonsense, 'The Bride!' is a misfire in practically every direction and we still weren’t able to dodge the bullets."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"PHOENIX (AZFamily)\n— The Bride of Frankenstein… What’s her story?\nSynopsis\nTaking place in 1930’s Chicago,\nThe Bride!\nfollows Frank (\nChristian Bale\n), who might be more famously known as Frankenstein’s monster. Wandering the world as a living corpse for over a century comes with intense loneliness, so Frank turns to eccentric scientist Dr. Cornelia Euphronious (\nAnnette Bening\n) to create a companion for him. The two dig up the corpse of recently murdered Ida (\nJessie Buckley\n) and, through the work of mad science, bring her back to life. Frank is immediately taken with his new bride, and when a fateful event at a nightclub turns deadly, the two end up on a cross-country run from authorities.\nMy thoughts\nThe line, “[X supporting character in X popular franchise]: what’s their story?” has become a bit of a meme lately, thanks to RedLetterMedia, but that’s only because seemingly every movie franchise out there can’t help but expand upon the backstory of every single supporting character. We’ve been getting “the other side of the story” from famous characters for decades now (who else remembers Jon Scieszka’s\nThe True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!\n?), but in this IP driven world of Hollywood, “the other side of the story” is another way of saying, “Hey, this dead horse isn’t quite dead enough!”\nWhile “What’s their story?” may be somewhat of a joke, that’s exactly what inspired\nMaggie Gyllenhaal\nto write and direct\nThe Bride!\n.\nShe was watching\nThe Bride of Frankenstein,\nwhere the titular Bride only has a couple of minutes of screentime with no dialogue, which got her wondering what was going on underneath that white striped, beehive hairdo. Not a bad jumping-off point to put your own spin on a classic tale, but when one spins too much, they get dizzy and lose sight of the goal at hand.\nThe many minds of Mary Shelley\nAnybody who went to film school remembers those students whose stories couldn’t just be a story, but a story that could only be realized through pretentious, esoteric means in an attempt to give it some deeper meaning (spoiler alert: it usually doesn’t). Maggie Gyllenhaal evidently employed this line of thinking when making\nThe Bride!\n. No, it just couldn’t be a hip, fresh take on the\nFrankenstein\nmythos where the monster’s bride gets more characterization, and thus, agency. Instead, things have to be taken several steps further by having the spirit of\nFrankenstein\nauthor Mary Shelley herself possess the Bride to do all these things.\nYes, you read that right.\nThe Bride!\nopens up with Mary Shelley (also played by Jessie Buckley) in a black void, lamenting that men initially took the credit for her seminal novel, and she never got to fully develop the character Frankenstein’s creation would take as his bride. She then possesses Ida, a young woman having a lavish dinner with mobsters, influencing her to let loose and go wild. When she gets more aggressive than the men of the 1930’s are accustomed to, she’s murdered and buried at the cemetery until she’s dug up by Frank and Dr. Euphronious.\nIn a way, the character we’re following is Mary Shelley on this journey, as the Bride never gets any proper characterization before she’s murdered, so we never really learn anything about her. The Bride has fits and starts where Shelley completely takes over her mind, the 1930’s dialogue breaking out into flowery early 19\nth\n-century diction. Shelley is almost the villain of the story, as she’s essentially a spirit taking hold of a woman’s mind and body completely against her will. An intriguing concept that never gets explored or resolved in a meaningful way, but would Shelley even agree with being represented like this?\nWith the Bride given barely any agency or control of her own actions, Frank gets more of the deeper characterization, making this come off as more his than hers. We just saw a forlorn\nFrankenstein\nin Guillermo del Toro’s rendition. Do we really need that all again, especially when this particular movie is called\nThe Bride!\n? Her underwritten character and simplistic motivations, which apply to other female roles, like\nPenélope Cruz\n’s aspiring detective character Myrna Mallow, only resulted in half-baked feminist themes that would have been archaic 30 years ago.\ncomments\nRoad to nowhere\nTo be frank (heh), the Mary Shelley possession gimmick is the only novel idea in this entire movie, even if it doesn’t make any sense after thinking about it for ten seconds. Mary Shelley is angry that she never got the respect she deserved for\nFrankenstein\nin her lifetime and wants to strike back at the patriarchal system, so she possesses a woman to vicariously live through her. In this context, if\nFrankenstein\nis a fictional novel written by Mary Shelley, then how is Frankenstein’s monster a real, living, breathing thing within this movie’s world?\nMaybe I’m overthinking it, but something feels like I put more thought into this than Maggie Gyllenhaal. Still, it’s the only real creative decision in this entire film, as Gyllenhaal appeared more interested in ripping off other movies and engaging in nepocasting by having brother\nJake\nand husband\nPeter Sarsgaard\nin oddly miscast roles. Sarsgaard’s Detective Wiles and Cruz’s Myrna add nothing beyond being the obligatory pursuers of our monstrous antiheroes.\nIf only it were fun or even the slightest bit coherent. The first hour rushes through the events at a breakneck pace that’s tough to keep up with, but then the second half gradually peters out as Frank and the Bride lumber from location to location, kicking off a class revolution along the way. It’s hard to care about any of it when it’s all so bland, predictable, and tedious. Have you already seen\nJoker\n,\nBonnie and Clyde\n,\nThelma & Louise\n, or heck, even\nBride of Chucky\n? Then you’ve essentially seen\nThe Bride!\n.\nHere comes the edge\nThe marketing for\nThe Bride!\nhas been incredibly over the top, practically shouting, “This isn’t your grandma’s\nBride of Frankenstein\n!” Of course, a movie in 2026 can’t have a boring title like\nThe Bride of Frankenstein\n, but it’s now\nThe Bride!\nwith an exclamation point and everything. It didn’t stop there, as the tagline in the posters and trailers states, “Here comes the mother f%#ing Bride!” It’s edgy and provocative, annoyingly so, but it appeared to at least be a movie attempting to do something bold and brash, even if it was trying too hard.\nThere’s no trying hard here, though. Aside from some post-production effects to give the film some pizzazz,\nThe Bride!\nis shockingly dull. I haven’t seen\nThe Lost Daughter\n, Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut from 2021, but if\nThe Bride!\nis anything to go by, maybe she’s better off being in front of the camera. Even the brief musical sequences where Frank and the Bride imagine themselves inside the movies they’re watching or taking over a nightclub’s dance floor amount to nothing due to erratic editing and camerawork. There’s rarely a legitimate creative effort being attempted here, instead mostly relying on faint echoes of the past.\nA movie about a woman fully embracing herself and violently letting it all out on society needs a director like Coralie Fargeat who’s willing to push things to the extreme with a committed, forceful directorial hand. Gyllenhaal exhibits none of that, rendering\nThe Bride!\na clunky slog that feels shoddily slapped together without a coherent vision. The only moments of any stylistic flourish are in the scenes where we see Mary Shelley in the black void, with careful lighting to make her appear as the personification of death.\nFrankie and Bride\nThank the heavens we have Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale leading this. If Buckley hasn’t convinced everyone how great of an actor she is with\nHamnet\n, then\nThe Bride!\nshould officially solidify it. Where the former was a fantastic movie that centered around Buckley’s performance,\nThe Bride!\nis one of those terrible movies she’s carrying on her back. She’s legitimately excellent as the resurrected Bride attempting to figure out herself, her love for Frank, and her overall place in a cruel, sexist world.\nBuckley is the key to making the silly Mary Shelley spirit element work to the level it can, as when she frantically snaps back and forth between the Bride and Mary Shelley speaking, it’s like watching two completely different people. A captivating actor whose catalogue of facial expressions goes a long way into developing her character when the script isn’t doing it for her. She almost convinces you that this movie is good at times!\nBuckley doesn’t have to bear the weight of the movie alone, as she luckily has a tall, lurching man in the form of Christian Bale’s Frank. While Buckley gets to go full gonzo, Bale gets to show a softer side while still hamming it up to a degree. You can tell he was having a great time playing a classic movie monster in grotesque makeup and prosthetics, with his sensitive performance creating a decent bridge between classic and modern.\nFinal verdict\nThe Bride!\nis a movie so obnoxiously full of itself, which wouldn’t be so bad if it were at least entertaining, but Maggie Gyllenhaal couldn’t even offer us that courtesy. In fact, the most entertaining thing about it is when you connect the dots that Gyllenhaal, who was killed by the Joker in\nThe Dark Knight\n, which\nstarred Christian Bale, has now written and directed a movie starring Christian Bale that rips off\nJoker\n, a movie that was derivative in its own right. Part\nBonnie and Clyde\n, part\nJoker\n, all nonsense,\nThe Bride!\nis a misfire in practically every direction, and we still weren’t able to dodge the bullets.\nMy rating:\n3.5\/10\nThe Bride!\nWill be released in theaters nationwide on Thursday, March 5.\nSee a spelling or grammatical error in our story?\nPlease click here to report it\n.\nDo you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send\nit to us here\nwith a brief description.\nCopyright 2026 KTVK\/KPHO. 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The Bride in ‘The Bride!’\n\n![(L to R) Chrisitan Bale as Frank and Jessie Buckley as The Bride in Warner Bros. Pictures THE...](https:\/\/gray-kpho-prod.gtv-cdn.com\/resizer\/v2\/L25HCS6BTJAE5DNXCPKYSUPNMA.jpeg?auth=45f1f5a1667416b05dec0b5a9a824611754933feac35575939eb4ad80da2a27c&width=800&height=450&smart=true)\n\n(L to R) Chrisitan Bale as Frank and Jessie Buckley as The Bride in Warner Bros. Pictures THE BRIDE! A Warner Bros. Pictures release.(Photo by Niko Tavernise)\n\nBy [Hunter V Norris](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/authors\/hunter-norris\/)\n\nPublished: Mar. 5, 2026 at 3:37 PM UTC\n\nComment\n\n0\n\nShare\n\n[Add Us On GoogleAdd as a preferred source on Google](https:\/\/google.com\/preferences\/source?q=https:\/\/www.azfamily.com)\n\n**PHOENIX (AZFamily)** — The Bride of Frankenstein… What’s her story?\n\n## **Synopsis**\nTaking place in 1930’s Chicago, *The Bride\\!* follows Frank ([Christian Bale](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0000288\/?ref_=tt_ov_3_2 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0000288\/?ref_=tt_ov_3_2\")), who might be more famously known as Frankenstein’s monster. Wandering the world as a living corpse for over a century comes with intense loneliness, so Frank turns to eccentric scientist Dr. Cornelia Euphronious ([Annette Bening](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0000906\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_5 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0000906\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_5\")) to create a companion for him. The two dig up the corpse of recently murdered Ida ([Jessie Buckley](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm2976580\/?ref_=tt_ov_3_1 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm2976580\/?ref_=tt_ov_3_1\")) and, through the work of mad science, bring her back to life. Frank is immediately taken with his new bride, and when a fateful event at a nightclub turns deadly, the two end up on a cross-country run from authorities.\n\n## **My thoughts**\nThe line, “\\[X supporting character in X popular franchise\\]: what’s their story?” has become a bit of a meme lately, thanks to RedLetterMedia, but that’s only because seemingly every movie franchise out there can’t help but expand upon the backstory of every single supporting character. We’ve been getting “the other side of the story” from famous characters for decades now (who else remembers Jon Scieszka’s *The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs\\!*?), but in this IP driven world of Hollywood, “the other side of the story” is another way of saying, “Hey, this dead horse isn’t quite dead enough!”\n\nWhile “What’s their story?” may be somewhat of a joke, that’s exactly what inspired [Maggie Gyllenhaal](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0350454\/?ref_=tt_ov_1_1 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0350454\/?ref_=tt_ov_1_1\") to write and direct *The Bride\\!*.She was watching *The Bride of Frankenstein,* where the titular Bride only has a couple of minutes of screentime with no dialogue, which got her wondering what was going on underneath that white striped, beehive hairdo. Not a bad jumping-off point to put your own spin on a classic tale, but when one spins too much, they get dizzy and lose sight of the goal at hand.\n\n## **The many minds of Mary Shelley**\nAnybody who went to film school remembers those students whose stories couldn’t just be a story, but a story that could only be realized through pretentious, esoteric means in an attempt to give it some deeper meaning (spoiler alert: it usually doesn’t). Maggie Gyllenhaal evidently employed this line of thinking when making *The Bride\\!*. No, it just couldn’t be a hip, fresh take on the *Frankenstein* mythos where the monster’s bride gets more characterization, and thus, agency. Instead, things have to be taken several steps further by having the spirit of *Frankenstein* author Mary Shelley herself possess the Bride to do all these things.\n\nYes, you read that right. *The Bride\\!* opens up with Mary Shelley (also played by Jessie Buckley) in a black void, lamenting that men initially took the credit for her seminal novel, and she never got to fully develop the character Frankenstein’s creation would take as his bride. She then possesses Ida, a young woman having a lavish dinner with mobsters, influencing her to let loose and go wild. When she gets more aggressive than the men of the 1930’s are accustomed to, she’s murdered and buried at the cemetery until she’s dug up by Frank and Dr. Euphronious.\n\nIn a way, the character we’re following is Mary Shelley on this journey, as the Bride never gets any proper characterization before she’s murdered, so we never really learn anything about her. The Bride has fits and starts where Shelley completely takes over her mind, the 1930’s dialogue breaking out into flowery early 19th\\-century diction. Shelley is almost the villain of the story, as she’s essentially a spirit taking hold of a woman’s mind and body completely against her will. An intriguing concept that never gets explored or resolved in a meaningful way, but would Shelley even agree with being represented like this?\n\nWith the Bride given barely any agency or control of her own actions, Frank gets more of the deeper characterization, making this come off as more his than hers. We just saw a forlorn [Frankenstein](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/02\/19\/frankenstein-review-while-it-could-have-gone-deeper-iconic-monster-finally-gets-treatment-he-deserves\/ \"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/02\/19\/frankenstein-review-while-it-could-have-gone-deeper-iconic-monster-finally-gets-treatment-he-deserves\/\") in Guillermo del Toro’s rendition. Do we really need that all again, especially when this particular movie is called *The Bride\\!*? Her underwritten character and simplistic motivations, which apply to other female roles, like [Penélope Cruz](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0004851\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_6 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0004851\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_6\")’s aspiring detective character Myrna Mallow, only resulted in half-baked feminist themes that would have been archaic 30 years ago.\n\n## Join the Conversation\n0\n\n0comments\n## **Road to nowhere**\nTo be frank (heh), the Mary Shelley possession gimmick is the only novel idea in this entire movie, even if it doesn’t make any sense after thinking about it for ten seconds. Mary Shelley is angry that she never got the respect she deserved for *Frankenstein* in her lifetime and wants to strike back at the patriarchal system, so she possesses a woman to vicariously live through her. In this context, if *Frankenstein* is a fictional novel written by Mary Shelley, then how is Frankenstein’s monster a real, living, breathing thing within this movie’s world?\n\nMaybe I’m overthinking it, but something feels like I put more thought into this than Maggie Gyllenhaal. Still, it’s the only real creative decision in this entire film, as Gyllenhaal appeared more interested in ripping off other movies and engaging in nepocasting by having brother [Jake](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0350453\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_3 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0350453\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_3\") and husband [Peter Sarsgaard](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0765597\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_4 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0765597\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_4\") in oddly miscast roles. Sarsgaard’s Detective Wiles and Cruz’s Myrna add nothing beyond being the obligatory pursuers of our monstrous antiheroes.\n\nIf only it were fun or even the slightest bit coherent. The first hour rushes through the events at a breakneck pace that’s tough to keep up with, but then the second half gradually peters out as Frank and the Bride lumber from location to location, kicking off a class revolution along the way. It’s hard to care about any of it when it’s all so bland, predictable, and tedious. Have you already seen *Joker*, *Bonnie and Clyde*, *Thelma & Louise*, or heck, even *Bride of Chucky*? Then you’ve essentially seen *The Bride\\!*.\n\n## **Here comes the edge**\nThe marketing for *The Bride\\!* has been incredibly over the top, practically shouting, “This isn’t your grandma’s *Bride of Frankenstein*!” Of course, a movie in 2026 can’t have a boring title like *The Bride of Frankenstein*, but it’s now *The Bride\\!* with an exclamation point and everything. It didn’t stop there, as the tagline in the posters and trailers states, “Here comes the mother f%\\#ing Bride!” It’s edgy and provocative, annoyingly so, but it appeared to at least be a movie attempting to do something bold and brash, even if it was trying too hard.\n\nThere’s no trying hard here, though. Aside from some post-production effects to give the film some pizzazz, *The Bride\\!* is shockingly dull. I haven’t seen *The Lost Daughter*, Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut from 2021, but if *The Bride\\!* is anything to go by, maybe she’s better off being in front of the camera. Even the brief musical sequences where Frank and the Bride imagine themselves inside the movies they’re watching or taking over a nightclub’s dance floor amount to nothing due to erratic editing and camerawork. There’s rarely a legitimate creative effort being attempted here, instead mostly relying on faint echoes of the past.\n\nA movie about a woman fully embracing herself and violently letting it all out on society needs a director like Coralie Fargeat who’s willing to push things to the extreme with a committed, forceful directorial hand. Gyllenhaal exhibits none of that, rendering *The Bride\\!* a clunky slog that feels shoddily slapped together without a coherent vision. The only moments of any stylistic flourish are in the scenes where we see Mary Shelley in the black void, with careful lighting to make her appear as the personification of death.\n\n## **Frankie and Bride**\nThank the heavens we have Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale leading this. If Buckley hasn’t convinced everyone how great of an actor she is with [*Hamnet*](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2025\/11\/28\/hamnet-review-work-master-im-not-talking-about-shakespeare\/ \"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2025\/11\/28\/hamnet-review-work-master-im-not-talking-about-shakespeare\/\"), then *The Bride\\!* should officially solidify it. Where the former was a fantastic movie that centered around Buckley’s performance, *The Bride\\!* is one of those terrible movies she’s carrying on her back. She’s legitimately excellent as the resurrected Bride attempting to figure out herself, her love for Frank, and her overall place in a cruel, sexist world.\n\nBuckley is the key to making the silly Mary Shelley spirit element work to the level it can, as when she frantically snaps back and forth between the Bride and Mary Shelley speaking, it’s like watching two completely different people. A captivating actor whose catalogue of facial expressions goes a long way into developing her character when the script isn’t doing it for her. She almost convinces you that this movie is good at times\\!\n\nBuckley doesn’t have to bear the weight of the movie alone, as she luckily has a tall, lurching man in the form of Christian Bale’s Frank. While Buckley gets to go full gonzo, Bale gets to show a softer side while still hamming it up to a degree. You can tell he was having a great time playing a classic movie monster in grotesque makeup and prosthetics, with his sensitive performance creating a decent bridge between classic and modern.\n\n## **Final verdict**\n*The Bride\\!* is a movie so obnoxiously full of itself, which wouldn’t be so bad if it were at least entertaining, but Maggie Gyllenhaal couldn’t even offer us that courtesy. In fact, the most entertaining thing about it is when you connect the dots that Gyllenhaal, who was killed by the Joker in *The Dark Knight*, whichstarred Christian Bale, has now written and directed a movie starring Christian Bale that rips off *Joker*, a movie that was derivative in its own right. Part *Bonnie and Clyde*, part *Joker*, all nonsense, *The Bride\\!* is a misfire in practically every direction, and we still weren’t able to dodge the bullets.\n\n## **My rating:** ****3\\.5\/10****\n[*The Bride\\!*](https:\/\/www.thebridemovie.com\/ \"https:\/\/www.thebridemovie.com\/\")Will be released in theaters nationwide on Thursday, March 5.\n\n*See a spelling or grammatical error in our story?* [*Please click here to report it*](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/page\/send-us-your-feedback\/)*.*\n\n*Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send* [*it to us here*](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/community\/user-content) *with a brief description.*\n\n*Copyright 2026 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.*\n\n## Join The Conversation\nComments0\n\nWe want to hear what you think. Create a free account to share your thoughts. Read our community guidelines [here](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/commenting-policy\/).\n\n#### Most Read\n[![A small plane crashed near a busy intersection in central Phoenix on Sunday afternoon.](https:\/\/gray-kpho-prod.gtv-cdn.com\/resizer\/v2\/5W3O2ILKR5CVDC32P6A7JM47NU.jpg?auth=0875f6717eb2f49bb0348d2f9e7a17dca6fceae5e813f5ac16663479e1cd6623&width=800&height=450&smart=true)](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/04\/13\/small-plane-makes-emergency-landing-busy-central-phoenix-road-no-injuries\/)\n\n###### [Small plane makes emergency landing on busy central Phoenix road; no injuries](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/04\/13\/small-plane-makes-emergency-landing-busy-central-phoenix-road-no-injuries\/)\n\n[![A child has died after a serious rollover crash closed part of Interstate 17 in north Phoenix...](https:\/\/gray-kpho-prod.gtv-cdn.com\/resizer\/v2\/PRX5TGIXQNERLGDCL6POXGZO7E.png?auth=7bfd87f112aebbaf691f487dddc509f845d00051cddaf0a59be2dfb952541514&width=800&height=450&smart=true)](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/04\/12\/4-hospitalized-after-serious-rollover-crash-closes-i-17-north-phoenix\/)\n\n###### [Child dead, 4 others hurt after rollover crash closes I-17 in north Phoenix](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/04\/12\/4-hospitalized-after-serious-rollover-crash-closes-i-17-north-phoenix\/)\n\n[![FILE - soldiers marching](https:\/\/gray-kpho-prod.gtv-cdn.com\/resizer\/v2\/7OYSDA5AANEWZGISJJXRAKHB7A.png?auth=4f9df13539ab02096292dbcf414099ae8644539ccb62aab6dd53bf1b0079113c&width=800&height=450&smart=true)](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/04\/09\/american-men-will-be-automatically-registered-military-draft-starting-december\/)\n\n###### [American men will be automatically registered for the military draft starting in December](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/04\/09\/american-men-will-be-automatically-registered-military-draft-starting-december\/)\n\n[![A Phoenix couple says their home has been hit by cars twice in less than six months.](https:\/\/gray-kpho-prod.gtv-cdn.com\/resizer\/v2\/ZEEKKDWAWZGELFBULBGC2VDJPI.png?auth=fab28537c9428b378de65e8fdbf42d1ddd20f7a453135513e188f6bedb7e18a8&width=800&height=450&smart=true)](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/04\/08\/phoenix-couple-pleads-help-after-home-hit-by-cars-twice-six-months\/)\n\n###### [Phoenix couple pleads for help after home hit by cars twice in six months](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/04\/08\/phoenix-couple-pleads-help-after-home-hit-by-cars-twice-six-months\/)\n\n[![A worker is dead after a palm tree skirt fell on him in Tempe on Sunday morning.](https:\/\/gray-kpho-prod.gtv-cdn.com\/resizer\/v2\/JRVBECCAAJF7TPL4S6QIRJC5XM.png?auth=c29de17416b25b3d3a3628b612b03cbbaa10fab148bfc316c4b37d9eab33ae34&width=800&height=450&smart=true)](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/04\/12\/tree-trimmer-dies-after-accident-tempe\/)\n\n###### [Worker dies after palm tree skirt falls on him in Tempe](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/04\/12\/tree-trimmer-dies-after-accident-tempe\/)\n\n[![Sgt. 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and...](https:\/\/gray-kpho-prod.gtv-cdn.com\/resizer\/v2\/6BLEYI3MVBHA7MSLV2UGFZWWKU.png?auth=87918fe8ba7f7347687bb2a0297865b0730cc955d64228387a2fedbb81763afd&width=800&height=450&smart=true)](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/04\/10\/country-thunder-delivers-music-camping-festival-fun\/)\n\n###### [Country Thunder delivers music, camping and festival fun](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/04\/10\/country-thunder-delivers-music-camping-festival-fun\/)\n\n[![Country artists like Shari Rowe are bringing their high-energy sound to Country Thunder.](https:\/\/gray-kpho-prod.gtv-cdn.com\/resizer\/v2\/https%3A%2F%2Fdo0bihdskp9dy.cloudfront.net%2F04-10-2026%2Ft_e281d98a0ba84d43a84759c08d93538d_name_file_1280x720_2000_v3_1_.jpg?auth=1d6ff719755e25fe064ed1ab9960e40be6b4e4dca37bc78e0b3056933a26326b&width=800&height=450&smart=true)](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/video\/2026\/04\/10\/shari-rowe-perform-country-thunder\/)\n\n###### [Shari Rowe to perform at Country 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602-207-3333](mailto:programming@azfamily.com)\n\n[Closed Captioning\/Audio Description](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/page\/closed-captioning)\n\n[Terms of Service](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/terms-of-service)\n\n[Privacy Policy](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/privacy-policy)\n\n[Advertising](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/advertising)\n\n[DO NOT SELL MY PERSONAL INFORMATION](https:\/\/gray.tv\/optout)\n\n[CALIFORNIA PRIVACY NOTICE](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/privacy-policy)\n\n[Digital Marketing](https:\/\/gdmphoenix.com\/)\n\n[Click here](https:\/\/gray.tv\/uploads\/documents\/Gray-AI-Policy.pdf) to learn more about our approach to artificial intelligence.\n\nA Gray Local Media Station © 2002-2026\n\n[search by queryly](https:\/\/www.queryly.com\/)\n\n[Advanced Search]()\n\n![close](https:\/\/www.queryly.com\/images\/whitecloseicon.png)","attrs_readable_markdown":"**PHOENIX (AZFamily)** — The Bride of Frankenstein… What’s her story?\n\n## **Synopsis**\nTaking place in 1930’s Chicago, *The Bride\\!* follows Frank ([Christian Bale](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0000288\/?ref_=tt_ov_3_2 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0000288\/?ref_=tt_ov_3_2\")), who might be more famously known as Frankenstein’s monster. Wandering the world as a living corpse for over a century comes with intense loneliness, so Frank turns to eccentric scientist Dr. Cornelia Euphronious ([Annette Bening](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0000906\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_5 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0000906\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_5\")) to create a companion for him. The two dig up the corpse of recently murdered Ida ([Jessie Buckley](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm2976580\/?ref_=tt_ov_3_1 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm2976580\/?ref_=tt_ov_3_1\")) and, through the work of mad science, bring her back to life. Frank is immediately taken with his new bride, and when a fateful event at a nightclub turns deadly, the two end up on a cross-country run from authorities.\n\n## **My thoughts**\nThe line, “\\[X supporting character in X popular franchise\\]: what’s their story?” has become a bit of a meme lately, thanks to RedLetterMedia, but that’s only because seemingly every movie franchise out there can’t help but expand upon the backstory of every single supporting character. We’ve been getting “the other side of the story” from famous characters for decades now (who else remembers Jon Scieszka’s *The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs\\!*?), but in this IP driven world of Hollywood, “the other side of the story” is another way of saying, “Hey, this dead horse isn’t quite dead enough!”\n\nWhile “What’s their story?” may be somewhat of a joke, that’s exactly what inspired [Maggie Gyllenhaal](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0350454\/?ref_=tt_ov_1_1 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0350454\/?ref_=tt_ov_1_1\") to write and direct *The Bride\\!*.She was watching *The Bride of Frankenstein,* where the titular Bride only has a couple of minutes of screentime with no dialogue, which got her wondering what was going on underneath that white striped, beehive hairdo. Not a bad jumping-off point to put your own spin on a classic tale, but when one spins too much, they get dizzy and lose sight of the goal at hand.\n\n## **The many minds of Mary Shelley**\nAnybody who went to film school remembers those students whose stories couldn’t just be a story, but a story that could only be realized through pretentious, esoteric means in an attempt to give it some deeper meaning (spoiler alert: it usually doesn’t). Maggie Gyllenhaal evidently employed this line of thinking when making *The Bride\\!*. No, it just couldn’t be a hip, fresh take on the *Frankenstein* mythos where the monster’s bride gets more characterization, and thus, agency. Instead, things have to be taken several steps further by having the spirit of *Frankenstein* author Mary Shelley herself possess the Bride to do all these things.\n\nYes, you read that right. *The Bride\\!* opens up with Mary Shelley (also played by Jessie Buckley) in a black void, lamenting that men initially took the credit for her seminal novel, and she never got to fully develop the character Frankenstein’s creation would take as his bride. She then possesses Ida, a young woman having a lavish dinner with mobsters, influencing her to let loose and go wild. When she gets more aggressive than the men of the 1930’s are accustomed to, she’s murdered and buried at the cemetery until she’s dug up by Frank and Dr. Euphronious.\n\nIn a way, the character we’re following is Mary Shelley on this journey, as the Bride never gets any proper characterization before she’s murdered, so we never really learn anything about her. The Bride has fits and starts where Shelley completely takes over her mind, the 1930’s dialogue breaking out into flowery early 19th\\-century diction. Shelley is almost the villain of the story, as she’s essentially a spirit taking hold of a woman’s mind and body completely against her will. An intriguing concept that never gets explored or resolved in a meaningful way, but would Shelley even agree with being represented like this?\n\nWith the Bride given barely any agency or control of her own actions, Frank gets more of the deeper characterization, making this come off as more his than hers. We just saw a forlorn [Frankenstein](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/02\/19\/frankenstein-review-while-it-could-have-gone-deeper-iconic-monster-finally-gets-treatment-he-deserves\/ \"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2026\/02\/19\/frankenstein-review-while-it-could-have-gone-deeper-iconic-monster-finally-gets-treatment-he-deserves\/\") in Guillermo del Toro’s rendition. Do we really need that all again, especially when this particular movie is called *The Bride\\!*? Her underwritten character and simplistic motivations, which apply to other female roles, like [Penélope Cruz](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0004851\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_6 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0004851\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_6\")’s aspiring detective character Myrna Mallow, only resulted in half-baked feminist themes that would have been archaic 30 years ago.\n\ncomments\n\n## **Road to nowhere**\nTo be frank (heh), the Mary Shelley possession gimmick is the only novel idea in this entire movie, even if it doesn’t make any sense after thinking about it for ten seconds. Mary Shelley is angry that she never got the respect she deserved for *Frankenstein* in her lifetime and wants to strike back at the patriarchal system, so she possesses a woman to vicariously live through her. In this context, if *Frankenstein* is a fictional novel written by Mary Shelley, then how is Frankenstein’s monster a real, living, breathing thing within this movie’s world?\n\nMaybe I’m overthinking it, but something feels like I put more thought into this than Maggie Gyllenhaal. Still, it’s the only real creative decision in this entire film, as Gyllenhaal appeared more interested in ripping off other movies and engaging in nepocasting by having brother [Jake](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0350453\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_3 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0350453\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_3\") and husband [Peter Sarsgaard](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0765597\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_4 \"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/name\/nm0765597\/?ref_=tt_cst_t_4\") in oddly miscast roles. Sarsgaard’s Detective Wiles and Cruz’s Myrna add nothing beyond being the obligatory pursuers of our monstrous antiheroes.\n\nIf only it were fun or even the slightest bit coherent. The first hour rushes through the events at a breakneck pace that’s tough to keep up with, but then the second half gradually peters out as Frank and the Bride lumber from location to location, kicking off a class revolution along the way. It’s hard to care about any of it when it’s all so bland, predictable, and tedious. Have you already seen *Joker*, *Bonnie and Clyde*, *Thelma & Louise*, or heck, even *Bride of Chucky*? Then you’ve essentially seen *The Bride\\!*.\n\n## **Here comes the edge**\nThe marketing for *The Bride\\!* has been incredibly over the top, practically shouting, “This isn’t your grandma’s *Bride of Frankenstein*!” Of course, a movie in 2026 can’t have a boring title like *The Bride of Frankenstein*, but it’s now *The Bride\\!* with an exclamation point and everything. It didn’t stop there, as the tagline in the posters and trailers states, “Here comes the mother f%\\#ing Bride!” It’s edgy and provocative, annoyingly so, but it appeared to at least be a movie attempting to do something bold and brash, even if it was trying too hard.\n\nThere’s no trying hard here, though. Aside from some post-production effects to give the film some pizzazz, *The Bride\\!* is shockingly dull. I haven’t seen *The Lost Daughter*, Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut from 2021, but if *The Bride\\!* is anything to go by, maybe she’s better off being in front of the camera. Even the brief musical sequences where Frank and the Bride imagine themselves inside the movies they’re watching or taking over a nightclub’s dance floor amount to nothing due to erratic editing and camerawork. There’s rarely a legitimate creative effort being attempted here, instead mostly relying on faint echoes of the past.\n\nA movie about a woman fully embracing herself and violently letting it all out on society needs a director like Coralie Fargeat who’s willing to push things to the extreme with a committed, forceful directorial hand. Gyllenhaal exhibits none of that, rendering *The Bride\\!* a clunky slog that feels shoddily slapped together without a coherent vision. The only moments of any stylistic flourish are in the scenes where we see Mary Shelley in the black void, with careful lighting to make her appear as the personification of death.\n\n## **Frankie and Bride**\nThank the heavens we have Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale leading this. If Buckley hasn’t convinced everyone how great of an actor she is with [*Hamnet*](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2025\/11\/28\/hamnet-review-work-master-im-not-talking-about-shakespeare\/ \"https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/2025\/11\/28\/hamnet-review-work-master-im-not-talking-about-shakespeare\/\"), then *The Bride\\!* should officially solidify it. Where the former was a fantastic movie that centered around Buckley’s performance, *The Bride\\!* is one of those terrible movies she’s carrying on her back. She’s legitimately excellent as the resurrected Bride attempting to figure out herself, her love for Frank, and her overall place in a cruel, sexist world.\n\nBuckley is the key to making the silly Mary Shelley spirit element work to the level it can, as when she frantically snaps back and forth between the Bride and Mary Shelley speaking, it’s like watching two completely different people. A captivating actor whose catalogue of facial expressions goes a long way into developing her character when the script isn’t doing it for her. She almost convinces you that this movie is good at times\\!\n\nBuckley doesn’t have to bear the weight of the movie alone, as she luckily has a tall, lurching man in the form of Christian Bale’s Frank. While Buckley gets to go full gonzo, Bale gets to show a softer side while still hamming it up to a degree. You can tell he was having a great time playing a classic movie monster in grotesque makeup and prosthetics, with his sensitive performance creating a decent bridge between classic and modern.\n\n## **Final verdict**\n*The Bride\\!* is a movie so obnoxiously full of itself, which wouldn’t be so bad if it were at least entertaining, but Maggie Gyllenhaal couldn’t even offer us that courtesy. In fact, the most entertaining thing about it is when you connect the dots that Gyllenhaal, who was killed by the Joker in *The Dark Knight*, whichstarred Christian Bale, has now written and directed a movie starring Christian Bale that rips off *Joker*, a movie that was derivative in its own right. Part *Bonnie and Clyde*, part *Joker*, all nonsense, *The Bride\\!* is a misfire in practically every direction, and we still weren’t able to dodge the bullets.\n\n## **My rating:** ****3\\.5\/10****\n[*The Bride\\!*](https:\/\/www.thebridemovie.com\/ \"https:\/\/www.thebridemovie.com\/\")Will be released in theaters nationwide on Thursday, March 5.\n\n*See a spelling or grammatical error in our story?* [*Please click here to report it*](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/page\/send-us-your-feedback\/)*.*\n\n*Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send* [*it to us here*](https:\/\/www.azfamily.com\/community\/user-content) *with a brief description.*\n\n*Copyright 2026 KTVK\/KPHO. All rights reserved.*","meta_canonical":null}

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Boilerpipe Text	PHOENIX (AZFamily) — The Bride of Frankenstein… What’s her story? Synopsis Taking place in 1930’s Chicago, The Bride! follows Frank ( Christian Bale ), who might be more famously known as Frankenstein’s monster. Wandering the world as a living corpse for over a century comes with intense loneliness, so Frank turns to eccentric scientist Dr. Cornelia Euphronious ( Annette Bening ) to create a companion for him. The two dig up the corpse of recently murdered Ida ( Jessie Buckley ) and, through the work of mad science, bring her back to life. Frank is immediately taken with his new bride, and when a fateful event at a nightclub turns deadly, the two end up on a cross-country run from authorities. My thoughts The line, “[X supporting character in X popular franchise]: what’s their story?” has become a bit of a meme lately, thanks to RedLetterMedia, but that’s only because seemingly every movie franchise out there can’t help but expand upon the backstory of every single supporting character. We’ve been getting “the other side of the story” from famous characters for decades now (who else remembers Jon Scieszka’s The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! ?), but in this IP driven world of Hollywood, “the other side of the story” is another way of saying, “Hey, this dead horse isn’t quite dead enough!” While “What’s their story?” may be somewhat of a joke, that’s exactly what inspired Maggie Gyllenhaal to write and direct The Bride! . She was watching The Bride of Frankenstein, where the titular Bride only has a couple of minutes of screentime with no dialogue, which got her wondering what was going on underneath that white striped, beehive hairdo. Not a bad jumping-off point to put your own spin on a classic tale, but when one spins too much, they get dizzy and lose sight of the goal at hand. The many minds of Mary Shelley Anybody who went to film school remembers those students whose stories couldn’t just be a story, but a story that could only be realized through pretentious, esoteric means in an attempt to give it some deeper meaning (spoiler alert: it usually doesn’t). Maggie Gyllenhaal evidently employed this line of thinking when making The Bride! . No, it just couldn’t be a hip, fresh take on the Frankenstein mythos where the monster’s bride gets more characterization, and thus, agency. Instead, things have to be taken several steps further by having the spirit of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley herself possess the Bride to do all these things. Yes, you read that right. The Bride! opens up with Mary Shelley (also played by Jessie Buckley) in a black void, lamenting that men initially took the credit for her seminal novel, and she never got to fully develop the character Frankenstein’s creation would take as his bride. She then possesses Ida, a young woman having a lavish dinner with mobsters, influencing her to let loose and go wild. When she gets more aggressive than the men of the 1930’s are accustomed to, she’s murdered and buried at the cemetery until she’s dug up by Frank and Dr. Euphronious. In a way, the character we’re following is Mary Shelley on this journey, as the Bride never gets any proper characterization before she’s murdered, so we never really learn anything about her. The Bride has fits and starts where Shelley completely takes over her mind, the 1930’s dialogue breaking out into flowery early 19 th -century diction. Shelley is almost the villain of the story, as she’s essentially a spirit taking hold of a woman’s mind and body completely against her will. An intriguing concept that never gets explored or resolved in a meaningful way, but would Shelley even agree with being represented like this? With the Bride given barely any agency or control of her own actions, Frank gets more of the deeper characterization, making this come off as more his than hers. We just saw a forlorn Frankenstein in Guillermo del Toro’s rendition. Do we really need that all again, especially when this particular movie is called The Bride! ? Her underwritten character and simplistic motivations, which apply to other female roles, like Penélope Cruz ’s aspiring detective character Myrna Mallow, only resulted in half-baked feminist themes that would have been archaic 30 years ago. comments Road to nowhere To be frank (heh), the Mary Shelley possession gimmick is the only novel idea in this entire movie, even if it doesn’t make any sense after thinking about it for ten seconds. Mary Shelley is angry that she never got the respect she deserved for Frankenstein in her lifetime and wants to strike back at the patriarchal system, so she possesses a woman to vicariously live through her. In this context, if Frankenstein is a fictional novel written by Mary Shelley, then how is Frankenstein’s monster a real, living, breathing thing within this movie’s world? Maybe I’m overthinking it, but something feels like I put more thought into this than Maggie Gyllenhaal. Still, it’s the only real creative decision in this entire film, as Gyllenhaal appeared more interested in ripping off other movies and engaging in nepocasting by having brother Jake and husband Peter Sarsgaard in oddly miscast roles. Sarsgaard’s Detective Wiles and Cruz’s Myrna add nothing beyond being the obligatory pursuers of our monstrous antiheroes. If only it were fun or even the slightest bit coherent. The first hour rushes through the events at a breakneck pace that’s tough to keep up with, but then the second half gradually peters out as Frank and the Bride lumber from location to location, kicking off a class revolution along the way. It’s hard to care about any of it when it’s all so bland, predictable, and tedious. Have you already seen Joker , Bonnie and Clyde , Thelma & Louise , or heck, even Bride of Chucky ? Then you’ve essentially seen The Bride! . Here comes the edge The marketing for The Bride! has been incredibly over the top, practically shouting, “This isn’t your grandma’s Bride of Frankenstein !” Of course, a movie in 2026 can’t have a boring title like The Bride of Frankenstein , but it’s now The Bride! with an exclamation point and everything. It didn’t stop there, as the tagline in the posters and trailers states, “Here comes the mother f%#ing Bride!” It’s edgy and provocative, annoyingly so, but it appeared to at least be a movie attempting to do something bold and brash, even if it was trying too hard. There’s no trying hard here, though. Aside from some post-production effects to give the film some pizzazz, The Bride! is shockingly dull. I haven’t seen The Lost Daughter , Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut from 2021, but if The Bride! is anything to go by, maybe she’s better off being in front of the camera. Even the brief musical sequences where Frank and the Bride imagine themselves inside the movies they’re watching or taking over a nightclub’s dance floor amount to nothing due to erratic editing and camerawork. There’s rarely a legitimate creative effort being attempted here, instead mostly relying on faint echoes of the past. A movie about a woman fully embracing herself and violently letting it all out on society needs a director like Coralie Fargeat who’s willing to push things to the extreme with a committed, forceful directorial hand. Gyllenhaal exhibits none of that, rendering The Bride! a clunky slog that feels shoddily slapped together without a coherent vision. The only moments of any stylistic flourish are in the scenes where we see Mary Shelley in the black void, with careful lighting to make her appear as the personification of death. Frankie and Bride Thank the heavens we have Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale leading this. If Buckley hasn’t convinced everyone how great of an actor she is with Hamnet , then The Bride! should officially solidify it. Where the former was a fantastic movie that centered around Buckley’s performance, The Bride! is one of those terrible movies she’s carrying on her back. She’s legitimately excellent as the resurrected Bride attempting to figure out herself, her love for Frank, and her overall place in a cruel, sexist world. Buckley is the key to making the silly Mary Shelley spirit element work to the level it can, as when she frantically snaps back and forth between the Bride and Mary Shelley speaking, it’s like watching two completely different people. A captivating actor whose catalogue of facial expressions goes a long way into developing her character when the script isn’t doing it for her. She almost convinces you that this movie is good at times! Buckley doesn’t have to bear the weight of the movie alone, as she luckily has a tall, lurching man in the form of Christian Bale’s Frank. While Buckley gets to go full gonzo, Bale gets to show a softer side while still hamming it up to a degree. You can tell he was having a great time playing a classic movie monster in grotesque makeup and prosthetics, with his sensitive performance creating a decent bridge between classic and modern. Final verdict The Bride! is a movie so obnoxiously full of itself, which wouldn’t be so bad if it were at least entertaining, but Maggie Gyllenhaal couldn’t even offer us that courtesy. In fact, the most entertaining thing about it is when you connect the dots that Gyllenhaal, who was killed by the Joker in The Dark Knight , which starred Christian Bale, has now written and directed a movie starring Christian Bale that rips off Joker , a movie that was derivative in its own right. Part Bonnie and Clyde , part Joker , all nonsense, The Bride! is a misfire in practically every direction, and we still weren’t able to dodge the bullets. My rating: 3.5/10 The Bride! Will be released in theaters nationwide on Thursday, March 5. See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? Please click here to report it . Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send it to us here with a brief description. Copyright 2026 KTVK/KPHO. All rights reserved.
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The Bride in ‘The Bride!’ ![(L to R) Chrisitan Bale as Frank and Jessie Buckley as The Bride in Warner Bros. Pictures THE...](https://gray-kpho-prod.gtv-cdn.com/resizer/v2/L25HCS6BTJAE5DNXCPKYSUPNMA.jpeg?auth=45f1f5a1667416b05dec0b5a9a824611754933feac35575939eb4ad80da2a27c&width=800&height=450&smart=true) (L to R) Chrisitan Bale as Frank and Jessie Buckley as The Bride in Warner Bros. Pictures THE BRIDE! A Warner Bros. Pictures release.(Photo by Niko Tavernise) By [Hunter V Norris](https://www.azfamily.com/authors/hunter-norris/) Published: Mar. 5, 2026 at 3:37 PM UTC Comment 0 Share [Add Us On GoogleAdd as a preferred source on Google](https://google.com/preferences/source?q=https://www.azfamily.com) PHOENIX (AZFamily) — The Bride of Frankenstein… What’s her story? ## Synopsis Taking place in 1930’s Chicago, The Bride\! follows Frank ([Christian Bale](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000288/?ref_=tt_ov_3_2 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000288/?ref_=tt_ov_3_2")), who might be more famously known as Frankenstein’s monster. Wandering the world as a living corpse for over a century comes with intense loneliness, so Frank turns to eccentric scientist Dr. Cornelia Euphronious ([Annette Bening](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000906/?ref_=tt_cst_t_5 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000906/?ref_=tt_cst_t_5")) to create a companion for him. The two dig up the corpse of recently murdered Ida ([Jessie Buckley](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2976580/?ref_=tt_ov_3_1 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2976580/?ref_=tt_ov_3_1")) and, through the work of mad science, bring her back to life. Frank is immediately taken with his new bride, and when a fateful event at a nightclub turns deadly, the two end up on a cross-country run from authorities. ## My thoughts The line, “\[X supporting character in X popular franchise\]: what’s their story?” has become a bit of a meme lately, thanks to RedLetterMedia, but that’s only because seemingly every movie franchise out there can’t help but expand upon the backstory of every single supporting character. We’ve been getting “the other side of the story” from famous characters for decades now (who else remembers Jon Scieszka’s The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs\!?), but in this IP driven world of Hollywood, “the other side of the story” is another way of saying, “Hey, this dead horse isn’t quite dead enough!” While “What’s their story?” may be somewhat of a joke, that’s exactly what inspired [Maggie Gyllenhaal](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0350454/?ref_=tt_ov_1_1 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0350454/?ref_=tt_ov_1_1") to write and direct The Bride\!.She was watching The Bride of Frankenstein, where the titular Bride only has a couple of minutes of screentime with no dialogue, which got her wondering what was going on underneath that white striped, beehive hairdo. Not a bad jumping-off point to put your own spin on a classic tale, but when one spins too much, they get dizzy and lose sight of the goal at hand. ## The many minds of Mary Shelley Anybody who went to film school remembers those students whose stories couldn’t just be a story, but a story that could only be realized through pretentious, esoteric means in an attempt to give it some deeper meaning (spoiler alert: it usually doesn’t). Maggie Gyllenhaal evidently employed this line of thinking when making The Bride\!. No, it just couldn’t be a hip, fresh take on the Frankenstein mythos where the monster’s bride gets more characterization, and thus, agency. Instead, things have to be taken several steps further by having the spirit of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley herself possess the Bride to do all these things. Yes, you read that right. The Bride\! opens up with Mary Shelley (also played by Jessie Buckley) in a black void, lamenting that men initially took the credit for her seminal novel, and she never got to fully develop the character Frankenstein’s creation would take as his bride. She then possesses Ida, a young woman having a lavish dinner with mobsters, influencing her to let loose and go wild. When she gets more aggressive than the men of the 1930’s are accustomed to, she’s murdered and buried at the cemetery until she’s dug up by Frank and Dr. Euphronious. In a way, the character we’re following is Mary Shelley on this journey, as the Bride never gets any proper characterization before she’s murdered, so we never really learn anything about her. The Bride has fits and starts where Shelley completely takes over her mind, the 1930’s dialogue breaking out into flowery early 19th\-century diction. Shelley is almost the villain of the story, as she’s essentially a spirit taking hold of a woman’s mind and body completely against her will. An intriguing concept that never gets explored or resolved in a meaningful way, but would Shelley even agree with being represented like this? With the Bride given barely any agency or control of her own actions, Frank gets more of the deeper characterization, making this come off as more his than hers. We just saw a forlorn [Frankenstein](https://www.azfamily.com/2026/02/19/frankenstein-review-while-it-could-have-gone-deeper-iconic-monster-finally-gets-treatment-he-deserves/ "https://www.azfamily.com/2026/02/19/frankenstein-review-while-it-could-have-gone-deeper-iconic-monster-finally-gets-treatment-he-deserves/") in Guillermo del Toro’s rendition. Do we really need that all again, especially when this particular movie is called The Bride\!? Her underwritten character and simplistic motivations, which apply to other female roles, like [Penélope Cruz](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004851/?ref_=tt_cst_t_6 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004851/?ref_=tt_cst_t_6")’s aspiring detective character Myrna Mallow, only resulted in half-baked feminist themes that would have been archaic 30 years ago. ## Join the Conversation 0 0comments ## Road to nowhere To be frank (heh), the Mary Shelley possession gimmick is the only novel idea in this entire movie, even if it doesn’t make any sense after thinking about it for ten seconds. Mary Shelley is angry that she never got the respect she deserved for Frankenstein in her lifetime and wants to strike back at the patriarchal system, so she possesses a woman to vicariously live through her. In this context, if Frankenstein is a fictional novel written by Mary Shelley, then how is Frankenstein’s monster a real, living, breathing thing within this movie’s world? Maybe I’m overthinking it, but something feels like I put more thought into this than Maggie Gyllenhaal. Still, it’s the only real creative decision in this entire film, as Gyllenhaal appeared more interested in ripping off other movies and engaging in nepocasting by having brother [Jake](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0350453/?ref_=tt_cst_t_3 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0350453/?ref_=tt_cst_t_3") and husband [Peter Sarsgaard](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0765597/?ref_=tt_cst_t_4 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0765597/?ref_=tt_cst_t_4") in oddly miscast roles. Sarsgaard’s Detective Wiles and Cruz’s Myrna add nothing beyond being the obligatory pursuers of our monstrous antiheroes. If only it were fun or even the slightest bit coherent. The first hour rushes through the events at a breakneck pace that’s tough to keep up with, but then the second half gradually peters out as Frank and the Bride lumber from location to location, kicking off a class revolution along the way. It’s hard to care about any of it when it’s all so bland, predictable, and tedious. Have you already seen Joker, Bonnie and Clyde, Thelma & Louise, or heck, even Bride of Chucky? Then you’ve essentially seen The Bride\!. ## Here comes the edge The marketing for The Bride\! has been incredibly over the top, practically shouting, “This isn’t your grandma’s Bride of Frankenstein!” Of course, a movie in 2026 can’t have a boring title like The Bride of Frankenstein, but it’s now The Bride\! with an exclamation point and everything. It didn’t stop there, as the tagline in the posters and trailers states, “Here comes the mother f%\#ing Bride!” It’s edgy and provocative, annoyingly so, but it appeared to at least be a movie attempting to do something bold and brash, even if it was trying too hard. There’s no trying hard here, though. Aside from some post-production effects to give the film some pizzazz, The Bride\! is shockingly dull. I haven’t seen The Lost Daughter, Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut from 2021, but if The Bride\! is anything to go by, maybe she’s better off being in front of the camera. Even the brief musical sequences where Frank and the Bride imagine themselves inside the movies they’re watching or taking over a nightclub’s dance floor amount to nothing due to erratic editing and camerawork. There’s rarely a legitimate creative effort being attempted here, instead mostly relying on faint echoes of the past. A movie about a woman fully embracing herself and violently letting it all out on society needs a director like Coralie Fargeat who’s willing to push things to the extreme with a committed, forceful directorial hand. Gyllenhaal exhibits none of that, rendering The Bride\! a clunky slog that feels shoddily slapped together without a coherent vision. The only moments of any stylistic flourish are in the scenes where we see Mary Shelley in the black void, with careful lighting to make her appear as the personification of death. ## Frankie and Bride Thank the heavens we have Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale leading this. If Buckley hasn’t convinced everyone how great of an actor she is with [Hamnet](https://www.azfamily.com/2025/11/28/hamnet-review-work-master-im-not-talking-about-shakespeare/ "https://www.azfamily.com/2025/11/28/hamnet-review-work-master-im-not-talking-about-shakespeare/"), then The Bride\! should officially solidify it. Where the former was a fantastic movie that centered around Buckley’s performance, The Bride\! is one of those terrible movies she’s carrying on her back. She’s legitimately excellent as the resurrected Bride attempting to figure out herself, her love for Frank, and her overall place in a cruel, sexist world. Buckley is the key to making the silly Mary Shelley spirit element work to the level it can, as when she frantically snaps back and forth between the Bride and Mary Shelley speaking, it’s like watching two completely different people. A captivating actor whose catalogue of facial expressions goes a long way into developing her character when the script isn’t doing it for her. She almost convinces you that this movie is good at times\! Buckley doesn’t have to bear the weight of the movie alone, as she luckily has a tall, lurching man in the form of Christian Bale’s Frank. While Buckley gets to go full gonzo, Bale gets to show a softer side while still hamming it up to a degree. You can tell he was having a great time playing a classic movie monster in grotesque makeup and prosthetics, with his sensitive performance creating a decent bridge between classic and modern. ## Final verdict The Bride\! is a movie so obnoxiously full of itself, which wouldn’t be so bad if it were at least entertaining, but Maggie Gyllenhaal couldn’t even offer us that courtesy. In fact, the most entertaining thing about it is when you connect the dots that Gyllenhaal, who was killed by the Joker in The Dark Knight, whichstarred Christian Bale, has now written and directed a movie starring Christian Bale that rips off Joker, a movie that was derivative in its own right. Part Bonnie and Clyde, part Joker, all nonsense, The Bride\! is a misfire in practically every direction, and we still weren’t able to dodge the bullets. ## My rating: **3\.5/10** [The Bride\!](https://www.thebridemovie.com/ "https://www.thebridemovie.com/")Will be released in theaters nationwide on Thursday, March 5. See a spelling or grammatical error in our story? [Please click here to report it](https://www.azfamily.com/page/send-us-your-feedback/). Do you have a photo or video of a breaking news story? Send [it to us here](https://www.azfamily.com/community/user-content) with a brief description. Copyright 2026 KTVK/KPHO. All rights reserved. ## Join The Conversation Comments0 We want to hear what you think. Create a free account to share your thoughts. 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Readable Markdown	PHOENIX (AZFamily) — The Bride of Frankenstein… What’s her story? ## Synopsis Taking place in 1930’s Chicago, The Bride\! follows Frank ([Christian Bale](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000288/?ref_=tt_ov_3_2 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000288/?ref_=tt_ov_3_2")), who might be more famously known as Frankenstein’s monster. Wandering the world as a living corpse for over a century comes with intense loneliness, so Frank turns to eccentric scientist Dr. Cornelia Euphronious ([Annette Bening](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000906/?ref_=tt_cst_t_5 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000906/?ref_=tt_cst_t_5")) to create a companion for him. The two dig up the corpse of recently murdered Ida ([Jessie Buckley](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2976580/?ref_=tt_ov_3_1 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2976580/?ref_=tt_ov_3_1")) and, through the work of mad science, bring her back to life. Frank is immediately taken with his new bride, and when a fateful event at a nightclub turns deadly, the two end up on a cross-country run from authorities. ## My thoughts The line, “\[X supporting character in X popular franchise\]: what’s their story?” has become a bit of a meme lately, thanks to RedLetterMedia, but that’s only because seemingly every movie franchise out there can’t help but expand upon the backstory of every single supporting character. We’ve been getting “the other side of the story” from famous characters for decades now (who else remembers Jon Scieszka’s The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs\!?), but in this IP driven world of Hollywood, “the other side of the story” is another way of saying, “Hey, this dead horse isn’t quite dead enough!” While “What’s their story?” may be somewhat of a joke, that’s exactly what inspired [Maggie Gyllenhaal](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0350454/?ref_=tt_ov_1_1 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0350454/?ref_=tt_ov_1_1") to write and direct The Bride\!.She was watching The Bride of Frankenstein, where the titular Bride only has a couple of minutes of screentime with no dialogue, which got her wondering what was going on underneath that white striped, beehive hairdo. Not a bad jumping-off point to put your own spin on a classic tale, but when one spins too much, they get dizzy and lose sight of the goal at hand. ## The many minds of Mary Shelley Anybody who went to film school remembers those students whose stories couldn’t just be a story, but a story that could only be realized through pretentious, esoteric means in an attempt to give it some deeper meaning (spoiler alert: it usually doesn’t). Maggie Gyllenhaal evidently employed this line of thinking when making The Bride\!. No, it just couldn’t be a hip, fresh take on the Frankenstein mythos where the monster’s bride gets more characterization, and thus, agency. Instead, things have to be taken several steps further by having the spirit of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley herself possess the Bride to do all these things. Yes, you read that right. The Bride\! opens up with Mary Shelley (also played by Jessie Buckley) in a black void, lamenting that men initially took the credit for her seminal novel, and she never got to fully develop the character Frankenstein’s creation would take as his bride. She then possesses Ida, a young woman having a lavish dinner with mobsters, influencing her to let loose and go wild. When she gets more aggressive than the men of the 1930’s are accustomed to, she’s murdered and buried at the cemetery until she’s dug up by Frank and Dr. Euphronious. In a way, the character we’re following is Mary Shelley on this journey, as the Bride never gets any proper characterization before she’s murdered, so we never really learn anything about her. The Bride has fits and starts where Shelley completely takes over her mind, the 1930’s dialogue breaking out into flowery early 19th\-century diction. Shelley is almost the villain of the story, as she’s essentially a spirit taking hold of a woman’s mind and body completely against her will. An intriguing concept that never gets explored or resolved in a meaningful way, but would Shelley even agree with being represented like this? With the Bride given barely any agency or control of her own actions, Frank gets more of the deeper characterization, making this come off as more his than hers. We just saw a forlorn [Frankenstein](https://www.azfamily.com/2026/02/19/frankenstein-review-while-it-could-have-gone-deeper-iconic-monster-finally-gets-treatment-he-deserves/ "https://www.azfamily.com/2026/02/19/frankenstein-review-while-it-could-have-gone-deeper-iconic-monster-finally-gets-treatment-he-deserves/") in Guillermo del Toro’s rendition. Do we really need that all again, especially when this particular movie is called The Bride\!? Her underwritten character and simplistic motivations, which apply to other female roles, like [Penélope Cruz](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004851/?ref_=tt_cst_t_6 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004851/?ref_=tt_cst_t_6")’s aspiring detective character Myrna Mallow, only resulted in half-baked feminist themes that would have been archaic 30 years ago. comments ## Road to nowhere To be frank (heh), the Mary Shelley possession gimmick is the only novel idea in this entire movie, even if it doesn’t make any sense after thinking about it for ten seconds. Mary Shelley is angry that she never got the respect she deserved for Frankenstein in her lifetime and wants to strike back at the patriarchal system, so she possesses a woman to vicariously live through her. In this context, if Frankenstein is a fictional novel written by Mary Shelley, then how is Frankenstein’s monster a real, living, breathing thing within this movie’s world? Maybe I’m overthinking it, but something feels like I put more thought into this than Maggie Gyllenhaal. Still, it’s the only real creative decision in this entire film, as Gyllenhaal appeared more interested in ripping off other movies and engaging in nepocasting by having brother [Jake](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0350453/?ref_=tt_cst_t_3 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0350453/?ref_=tt_cst_t_3") and husband [Peter Sarsgaard](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0765597/?ref_=tt_cst_t_4 "https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0765597/?ref_=tt_cst_t_4") in oddly miscast roles. Sarsgaard’s Detective Wiles and Cruz’s Myrna add nothing beyond being the obligatory pursuers of our monstrous antiheroes. If only it were fun or even the slightest bit coherent. The first hour rushes through the events at a breakneck pace that’s tough to keep up with, but then the second half gradually peters out as Frank and the Bride lumber from location to location, kicking off a class revolution along the way. It’s hard to care about any of it when it’s all so bland, predictable, and tedious. Have you already seen Joker, Bonnie and Clyde, Thelma & Louise, or heck, even Bride of Chucky? Then you’ve essentially seen The Bride\!. ## Here comes the edge The marketing for The Bride\! has been incredibly over the top, practically shouting, “This isn’t your grandma’s Bride of Frankenstein!” Of course, a movie in 2026 can’t have a boring title like The Bride of Frankenstein, but it’s now The Bride\! with an exclamation point and everything. It didn’t stop there, as the tagline in the posters and trailers states, “Here comes the mother f%\#ing Bride!” It’s edgy and provocative, annoyingly so, but it appeared to at least be a movie attempting to do something bold and brash, even if it was trying too hard. There’s no trying hard here, though. Aside from some post-production effects to give the film some pizzazz, The Bride\! is shockingly dull. I haven’t seen The Lost Daughter, Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut from 2021, but if The Bride\! is anything to go by, maybe she’s better off being in front of the camera. Even the brief musical sequences where Frank and the Bride imagine themselves inside the movies they’re watching or taking over a nightclub’s dance floor amount to nothing due to erratic editing and camerawork. There’s rarely a legitimate creative effort being attempted here, instead mostly relying on faint echoes of the past. A movie about a woman fully embracing herself and violently letting it all out on society needs a director like Coralie Fargeat who’s willing to push things to the extreme with a committed, forceful directorial hand. Gyllenhaal exhibits none of that, rendering The Bride\! a clunky slog that feels shoddily slapped together without a coherent vision. The only moments of any stylistic flourish are in the scenes where we see Mary Shelley in the black void, with careful lighting to make her appear as the personification of death. ## Frankie and Bride Thank the heavens we have Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale leading this. If Buckley hasn’t convinced everyone how great of an actor she is with [Hamnet](https://www.azfamily.com/2025/11/28/hamnet-review-work-master-im-not-talking-about-shakespeare/ "https://www.azfamily.com/2025/11/28/hamnet-review-work-master-im-not-talking-about-shakespeare/"), then The Bride\! should officially solidify it. Where the former was a fantastic movie that centered around Buckley’s performance, The Bride\! is one of those terrible movies she’s carrying on her back. She’s legitimately excellent as the resurrected Bride attempting to figure out herself, her love for Frank, and her overall place in a cruel, sexist world. Buckley is the key to making the silly Mary Shelley spirit element work to the level it can, as when she frantically snaps back and forth between the Bride and Mary Shelley speaking, it’s like watching two completely different people. A captivating actor whose catalogue of facial expressions goes a long way into developing her character when the script isn’t doing it for her. She almost convinces you that this movie is good at times\! Buckley doesn’t have to bear the weight of the movie alone, as she luckily has a tall, lurching man in the form of Christian Bale’s Frank. While Buckley gets to go full gonzo, Bale gets to show a softer side while still hamming it up to a degree. You can tell he was having a great time playing a classic movie monster in grotesque makeup and prosthetics, with his sensitive performance creating a decent bridge between classic and modern. ## Final verdict The Bride\! is a movie so obnoxiously full of itself, which wouldn’t be so bad if it were at least entertaining, but Maggie Gyllenhaal couldn’t even offer us that courtesy. In fact, the most entertaining thing about it is when you connect the dots that Gyllenhaal, who was killed by the Joker in The Dark Knight, whichstarred Christian Bale, has now written and directed a movie starring Christian Bale that rips off Joker, a movie that was derivative in its own right. Part Bonnie and Clyde, part Joker, all nonsense, The Bride\! is a misfire in practically every direction, and we still weren’t able to dodge the bullets. ## My rating: **3\.5/10** [The Bride\!](https://www.thebridemovie.com/ "https://www.thebridemovie.com/")Will be released in theaters nationwide on Thursday, March 5. 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