🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 192 (from laksa199)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa192.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.denofgeek.com/movies/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein/\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein/\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein\/","crawl_time":1776507350,"first_indexed_time":1772669079,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,denofgeek!www,\/movies\/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein\/ s443","src_root_hash":"13977860436572702792","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"The Bride! Review: A Beautiful Abomination | Den of Geek","meta_descriptions":["Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale let their monster flags fly in The Bride!, a Frankenstein movie that amounts to pure madness."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"By\nDavid Crow\n|\nMarch 4, 2026\n|\n|\n32 Comments\nPhoto: Warner Bros. Pictures\nNever mind spare body parts. In\nMaggie Gyllenhaal\n’s\nThe Bride!\n, our eponymous newlywed is composed of three entirely separate and competing personalities. There is Ida, a seeming gangster’s mol hanging out in 1930s Chi during the post-Prohibition boom when we meet her; no less than the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who possesses Ida from time to time like a regal Pazuzu that speaks the Queen’s English with perfect diction; and then, finally, the Bride(!), a resurrected blur of both personas that is revealed to be more Faye Dunaway-as-Bonnie Parker than Elsa Lanchester’s\nBride of Frankenstein\n.\nIf this sounds bizarre, counterintuitive, and utterly chaotic, well…\nyes\n. But every tic and characterization, I should add, is played by tenacious Irish performer, and likely soon-to-be future Oscar-winner, Jessie Buckley. So it is also strangely fixating, even when the hodgepodge of ideas and influences Buckley and her writer-director fuse together add up to substantially less than the sum of their parts. At the risk of banality when discussing a\nFrankenstein\npicture, it’s a monstrosity of half-finished flourishes and fancies that’s been stitched together into what could charitably be called an abomination. Still, it is not one without a wacky sense of beauty to it.\nAs Gyllenhaal’s follow-up to her intimate and engrossing character study,\nThe Lost Daughter\n,\nThe Bride!\nis a daring swing; the kind of movie a budding auteur spends their creative capital on early before studios get enough perspective following a buzzy awards season (\nThe Lost Daughter\nwon Best Feature and Director at the Independent Spirit Awards). And in that context, the boldness of\nThe Bride!\nis something to appreciate despite its many stumbles and falls.\nAs best can be gleaned, Gyllenhaal took a familiar, ancient intellectual property, called up all her old friends and family—including husband Peter Sarsgaard,\nThe Dark Knight\nco-star\nChristian Bale\n, and brother Jake Gyllenhaal—and got them to chase every muse they could dream up with Hollywood money. This thing is, again, an expansion on\nThe Bride of Frankenstein\n, the 1935 masterpiece wherein the titular character never left the lab\nor uttered a line\n. She was played, however, by Lanchester who also narrated that film as Mary Shelley.\nIt’s a trick Gyllenhaal replicates with galaxy-brained daftness since not only is her and Buckley’s Mary telling the second part of a story you never knew you needed, but she’s doing so from the Great Beyond where in the afterlife, she is still bedeviled by the fact she failed to flesh out the Monster’s mate (a concept that does exist in the original 1818 novel but is never fulfilled by the literary Dr. Victor Frankenstein). Thus in\nThe Bride!\n, Shelley possesses Ida about 80 years after the author’s death and… promptly gets Ida murdered by gangland thugs.\nNot to worry, though, because around the same time, the Frankenstein Monster, who now is already taking his cues from pop culture and simply going by “Frankenstein,” or Frank to his friends, manages to make another buddy in Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), a scientist who isn’t mad, exactly, but is prone to take pity on lonely creatures. And Frank is one with tears in his eyes as he laments being denied “the garden of pleasures” that come from having a woman in his life.\nHe’s apparently wandered the world a century alone, finding solace only in the newfangled cinema screen, particularly whenever his favorite star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal doing a pretty fantastic Fred Astaire impression) has a new musical in town. Before you can say “it’s alive!,” Frank and the good-ish doc are digging up Ida and quickening her back to life. The conscripted Bride has no memory of who she was, or why she inexplicably starts sounding like Kate Hepburn in\nThe African Queen\nfrom time to time, but she is okay (for a while) with the notion of marrying the guy with the funny face. So long as they can go out to party, pillage, and eventually go on a vaguely feminist crime spree the leaves crooked cops and would-be rapists dead across the highways and heartlands.\nIf right about now you’re asking yourself how exactly all of these tonal extremes and expansive leaps in logic are bridged—they aren’t. This is a movie wherein both Mary Shelley’s ghost and her fictional creations exist simultaneously without rhyme or reason. It’s the type of movie where after Frank and Penelope (as the Bride is briefly convinced to call herself) take in a screening of\nWhite Zombie\n(1932), they see themselves up there on the screen as the ghouls.\nThe Bride!\nexists in a nether-realm between reality and multiple layers of fiction and artifice. Think of it as an\nInception\nstyled\nPurple Rose of Cairo\n. Or simply a mess. But within its clutter is plenty of fascinating elements to be fixated by, not least of which are the two central performances.\nIt’s serendipitous that\nThe Bride!\nis opening right on the eve of Buckley receiving her ultimate flowers within the industry. Until roughly five minutes ago, Buckley was an incredibly versatile and underrated star of the indie scene, doing soulful work in\nWilde Rose\nor the otherwise portentous\nMen\n. And yes, she is unforgettable in\nHamnet\n. But the universal praise of the latter makes her star-turn here as Gyllenhaal’s post-modern avenging angel of cinematic fantasies—from Lanchester to Dunaway, and even a bit of Ginger Rogers thrown in—all the more whiplash-inducing. Buckley has been tasked to play a 1930s collage with legs, sometimes all in the same scene, by an unwieldy script that is equal parts under- and overwritten. And she is never anything less than intensely watchable while nearly the whole movie falls apart around her.\nBale is another solid anchor, particularly in the movie’s first half. More lonely and pathetic than Jacob Elordi’s recent\ndeified version\nof Shelley’s Creature, Bale gets to revisit the pools of yearning humanity that made him so tragic in\nHostiles\nor the most vulnerable (and best) Bruce Wayne to date. When he’s asked to be monstrous and violently decadent in\nThe Bride!\n, he might have less success but one suspects that is the byproduct of discordant direction in a film which seeks to flitter between hardboiled shootouts and 1930s toe-tappers.\nWhich reminds: yes, there are musical sequences too! It begins when Frank watches Gyllenhaal hoofing with a top hat and cane, but soon goes quite literally the full\nYoung Frankenstein\n, with Bale’s Monster putting on the Ritz while Buckley is doing some Lady Gaga thing in the background. On one hand, it might be the best scene in the entire movie, and on the other, it is so diametrically opposed to what else Gyllenhaal is trying to communicate about these characters and this story that it is nothing short of a catastrophic derailment of the film’s train of thought.\nCuriously, this is the third Frankenstein movie we’ve had in almost as many years when you count the similarly\nBride\ninfluenced\nPoor Things\n. In some ways, Gyllenhaal is more proud of embracing her pulpy influences than Yorgos Lanthimos or even Guillermo del Toro, who succeeded at turning\nFrankenstein\ninto an\nOscar-nominated prestige drama\n.\nThe Bride!\ndoesn’t want awards. Yet it does seem to want to be all things at once. Which is unfortunate because in the ensuing chaos it amounts to not much at all. But it sure does leave a spectacular looking trail of nonsense in its wake.\nThe Bride! opens on Friday, March 6.\nRating:\n2 out of 5","attrs_markdown":"[Skip to main content area](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein\/#main)\n\n[Menu](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein\/#nav-primary__wrapper)\n\n[Subscribe](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/newsletter\/)\n\n[Den of Geek](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/)\n\n- [Instagram](https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/denofgeek\/)\n- [Youtube](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/denofgeektube)\n- [TikTok](https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@denofgeektv?lang=en)\n- [Facebook](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/DenOfGeekUS)\n- [X](https:\/\/x.com\/DenofGeekUS)\n\nToggle search\n\n- [Movies](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/)\n- [TV](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/)\n- [Games](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/games\/)\n- [Comics](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/comics\/)\n- [Books](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/books\/)\n- [Collectibles](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/collectibles\/)\n- [Magazine](https:\/\/issuu.com\/denofgeek)\n- [Shows & Podcasts](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/podcasts\/)\n- [Video](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/videos\/)\n- [Newsletter](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/newsletter\/)\n\n[Subscribe](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/newsletter\/)\n\n- [Instagram](https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/denofgeek\/)\n- [Youtube](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/denofgeektube)\n- [TikTok](https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@denofgeektv?lang=en)\n- [Facebook](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/DenOfGeekUS)\n- [X](https:\/\/x.com\/DenofGeekUS)\n\n[Reviews](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/reviews\/)\n\n# The Bride! Review: A Beautiful Abomination\nJessie Buckley and Christian Bale let their monster flags fly in The Bride!, a Frankenstein movie that amounts to pure madness.\n\n![](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/David-Crow-Profile-2.jpg?fit=200%2C190&resize=200%2C200&filter=grayscale) By [David Crow](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/author\/david-crow\/) \\|\n\nMarch 4, 2026\n\n\\|\n\n- [Share on Facebook (opens in a new tab)](https:\/\/facebook.com\/sharer\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F&t=The%20Bride!%20Review:%20A%20Beautiful%20Abomination)\n- [Share on X (opens in a new tab)](https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F&text=The%20Bride!%20Review:%20A%20Beautiful%20Abomination)\n- [Share on Linkedin (opens in a new tab)](https:\/\/reddit.com\/submit\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F&title=The%20Bride!%20Review:%20A%20Beautiful%20Abomination)\n- [Share on email (opens in a new tab)](<mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F%3Futm_source%3Demailshare%26utm_medium%3Darticle%26utm_campaign%3Darticleshare&subject=The Bride! Review: A Beautiful Abomination>)\n\n\\| [32 Comments](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein\/#disqus_thread)\n\n![Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in The Bride Review](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Christian-Bale-and-Jessie-Buckley-in-The-Bride-Review.jpeg?resize=768%2C432)\n\n*Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures*\n\nNever mind spare body parts. In [Maggie Gyllenhaal](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/maggie-gyllenhaal\/)’s *The Bride\\!*, our eponymous newlywed is composed of three entirely separate and competing personalities. There is Ida, a seeming gangster’s mol hanging out in 1930s Chi during the post-Prohibition boom when we meet her; no less than the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who possesses Ida from time to time like a regal Pazuzu that speaks the Queen’s English with perfect diction; and then, finally, the Bride(!), a resurrected blur of both personas that is revealed to be more Faye Dunaway-as-Bonnie Parker than Elsa Lanchester’s [Bride of Frankenstein](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/bride-of-frankenstein\/).\n\nIf this sounds bizarre, counterintuitive, and utterly chaotic, well… *yes*. But every tic and characterization, I should add, is played by tenacious Irish performer, and likely soon-to-be future Oscar-winner, Jessie Buckley. So it is also strangely fixating, even when the hodgepodge of ideas and influences Buckley and her writer-director fuse together add up to substantially less than the sum of their parts. At the risk of banality when discussing a [Frankenstein](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/frankenstein\/) picture, it’s a monstrosity of half-finished flourishes and fancies that’s been stitched together into what could charitably be called an abomination. Still, it is not one without a wacky sense of beauty to it.\n\nAs Gyllenhaal’s follow-up to her intimate and engrossing character study, [*The Lost Daughter*](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/the-lost-daughter-review-olivia-colman\/), *The Bride\\!* is a daring swing; the kind of movie a budding auteur spends their creative capital on early before studios get enough perspective following a buzzy awards season (*The Lost Daughter* won Best Feature and Director at the Independent Spirit Awards). And in that context, the boldness of *The Bride\\!* is something to appreciate despite its many stumbles and falls.\n\nAs best can be gleaned, Gyllenhaal took a familiar, ancient intellectual property, called up all her old friends and family—including husband Peter Sarsgaard, *The Dark Knight* co-star [Christian Bale](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/christian-bale\/), and brother Jake Gyllenhaal—and got them to chase every muse they could dream up with Hollywood money. This thing is, again, an expansion on *The Bride of Frankenstein*, the 1935 masterpiece wherein the titular character never left the lab [or uttered a line](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/maggie-gyllenhaal-is-determined-to-give-the-bride-of-frankenstein-her-voice\/). She was played, however, by Lanchester who also narrated that film as Mary Shelley.\n\nAd\n\nAd – content continues below\n\nIt’s a trick Gyllenhaal replicates with galaxy-brained daftness since not only is her and Buckley’s Mary telling the second part of a story you never knew you needed, but she’s doing so from the Great Beyond where in the afterlife, she is still bedeviled by the fact she failed to flesh out the Monster’s mate (a concept that does exist in the original 1818 novel but is never fulfilled by the literary Dr. Victor Frankenstein). Thus in *The Bride\\!*, Shelley possesses Ida about 80 years after the author’s death and… promptly gets Ida murdered by gangland thugs.\n\nNot to worry, though, because around the same time, the Frankenstein Monster, who now is already taking his cues from pop culture and simply going by “Frankenstein,” or Frank to his friends, manages to make another buddy in Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), a scientist who isn’t mad, exactly, but is prone to take pity on lonely creatures. And Frank is one with tears in his eyes as he laments being denied “the garden of pleasures” that come from having a woman in his life.\n\nHe’s apparently wandered the world a century alone, finding solace only in the newfangled cinema screen, particularly whenever his favorite star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal doing a pretty fantastic Fred Astaire impression) has a new musical in town. Before you can say “it’s alive!,” Frank and the good-ish doc are digging up Ida and quickening her back to life. The conscripted Bride has no memory of who she was, or why she inexplicably starts sounding like Kate Hepburn in *The African Queen* from time to time, but she is okay (for a while) with the notion of marrying the guy with the funny face. So long as they can go out to party, pillage, and eventually go on a vaguely feminist crime spree the leaves crooked cops and would-be rapists dead across the highways and heartlands.\n\nIf right about now you’re asking yourself how exactly all of these tonal extremes and expansive leaps in logic are bridged—they aren’t. This is a movie wherein both Mary Shelley’s ghost and her fictional creations exist simultaneously without rhyme or reason. It’s the type of movie where after Frank and Penelope (as the Bride is briefly convinced to call herself) take in a screening of *White Zombie* (1932), they see themselves up there on the screen as the ghouls.\n\n*The Bride\\!* exists in a nether-realm between reality and multiple layers of fiction and artifice. Think of it as an *Inception* styled *Purple Rose of Cairo*. Or simply a mess. But within its clutter is plenty of fascinating elements to be fixated by, not least of which are the two central performances.\n\nIt’s serendipitous that *The Bride\\!* is opening right on the eve of Buckley receiving her ultimate flowers within the industry. Until roughly five minutes ago, Buckley was an incredibly versatile and underrated star of the indie scene, doing soulful work in [*Wilde Rose*](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/wild-rose-review-a-musical-drama-powered-by-a-star-making-turn\/) or the otherwise portentous [*Men*](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/men-review-alex-garland-and-a24-horror-goes-primal\/). And yes, she is unforgettable in [*Hamnet*](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/hamnet-review-shakespeare-greatest-tragedy\/). But the universal praise of the latter makes her star-turn here as Gyllenhaal’s post-modern avenging angel of cinematic fantasies—from Lanchester to Dunaway, and even a bit of Ginger Rogers thrown in—all the more whiplash-inducing. Buckley has been tasked to play a 1930s collage with legs, sometimes all in the same scene, by an unwieldy script that is equal parts under- and overwritten. And she is never anything less than intensely watchable while nearly the whole movie falls apart around her.\n\nAd\n\nAd – content continues below\n\nBale is another solid anchor, particularly in the movie’s first half. More lonely and pathetic than Jacob Elordi’s recent [deified version](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/frankenstein-movies-ranked-in-order-of-faithfulness-mary-shelley-book\/) of Shelley’s Creature, Bale gets to revisit the pools of yearning humanity that made him so tragic in *Hostiles* or the most vulnerable (and best) Bruce Wayne to date. When he’s asked to be monstrous and violently decadent in *The Bride\\!*, he might have less success but one suspects that is the byproduct of discordant direction in a film which seeks to flitter between hardboiled shootouts and 1930s toe-tappers.\n\n## Join our mailing list\nGet the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox\\!\n\nWhich reminds: yes, there are musical sequences too! It begins when Frank watches Gyllenhaal hoofing with a top hat and cane, but soon goes quite literally the full *Young Frankenstein*, with Bale’s Monster putting on the Ritz while Buckley is doing some Lady Gaga thing in the background. On one hand, it might be the best scene in the entire movie, and on the other, it is so diametrically opposed to what else Gyllenhaal is trying to communicate about these characters and this story that it is nothing short of a catastrophic derailment of the film’s train of thought.\n\nCuriously, this is the third Frankenstein movie we’ve had in almost as many years when you count the similarly *Bride* influenced *[Poor Things](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/poor-things-review-emma-stone-frankenstein-for-ages\/)*. In some ways, Gyllenhaal is more proud of embracing her pulpy influences than Yorgos Lanthimos or even Guillermo del Toro, who succeeded at turning *Frankenstein* into an [Oscar-nominated prestige drama](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/frankenstein-review-guillermo-del-toro\/). *The Bride\\!* doesn’t want awards. Yet it does seem to want to be all things at once. Which is unfortunate because in the ensuing chaos it amounts to not much at all. But it sure does leave a spectacular looking trail of nonsense in its wake.\n\n*The Bride! opens on Friday, March 6.*\n\nAd\n\nRating:\n\n2 out of 5\n\n- Share:\n- [Share on Facebook (opens in a new tab)](https:\/\/facebook.com\/sharer\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F&t=The%20Bride!%20Review:%20A%20Beautiful%20Abomination)\n- [Share on X (opens in a new tab)](https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F&text=The%20Bride!%20Review:%20A%20Beautiful%20Abomination)\n- [Share on Linkedin (opens in a new tab)](https:\/\/reddit.com\/submit\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F&title=The%20Bride!%20Review:%20A%20Beautiful%20Abomination)\n- [Share on email (opens in a new tab)](<mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F%3Futm_source%3Demailshare%26utm_medium%3Darticle%26utm_campaign%3Darticleshare&subject=The Bride! Review: A Beautiful Abomination>)\n\n\\|\n\nComment:\n\n[32 Comments](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein\/#disqus_thread)\n\nTags: [Bride of Frankenstein](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/bride-of-frankenstein\/)[Christian Bale](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/christian-bale\/)[Frankenstein](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/frankenstein\/)[Horror](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/horror\/)[Maggie Gyllenhaal](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/maggie-gyllenhaal\/)\n\n## Frankenstein\n[![Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jessie Buckley on The Bride set](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Maggie-Gyllenhaal-and-Jessie-Buckley-on-The-Bride-set.jpeg?resize=768%2C432)](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/maggie-gyllenhaal-is-determined-to-give-the-bride-of-frankenstein-her-voice\/)\n\n[Movies](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/)\n\n### [Maggie Gyllenhaal Is Determined to Give the Bride of Frankenstein Her Voice](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/maggie-gyllenhaal-is-determined-to-give-the-bride-of-frankenstein-her-voice\/)\nJanuary 15, 2026\n\n\\| By [David Crow](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/author\/david-crow\/)\n\n[![Frankenstein Adaptations Faithfulness ranked](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Frankenstein-Adaptations-Faithfulness-ranked.jpg?resize=768%2C432)](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/frankenstein-movies-ranked-in-order-of-faithfulness-mary-shelley-book\/)\n\n[Movies](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/)\n\n### [Frankenstein Movies Ranked in Order of Faithfulness to the Mary Shelley Book](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/frankenstein-movies-ranked-in-order-of-faithfulness-mary-shelley-book\/)\nNovember 11, 2025\n\n\\| By [Don Kaye](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/author\/don-kaye\/)\n\n[![Guillermo del Toro and Oscar Isaac on Frankenstein set](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Frankenstein-Guillermo-and-Isaac.jpg?resize=768%2C432)](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/frankenstein-biggest-changes-guillermo-del-toro-made-from-book\/)\n\n[Movies](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/)\n\n### [Frankenstein: The Biggest Changes Guillermo del Toro Made from the Book](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/frankenstein-biggest-changes-guillermo-del-toro-made-from-book\/)\nNovember 7, 2025\n\n\\| By [Joe George](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/author\/joe-george\/)\n\n[![Frankenstein cover den of geek](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Frankenstein-cover-den-of-geek.jpg?resize=768%2C432)](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/frankenstein-exclusive-look-guillermo-del-toro-love-letter-mary-shelley\/)\n\n[Movies](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/)\n\n### [Frankenstein: Exclusive Look Inside Guillermo del Toro’s Love Letter to Mary Shelley](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/frankenstein-exclusive-look-guillermo-del-toro-love-letter-mary-shelley\/)\nOctober 29, 2025\n\n\\| By [David Crow](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/author\/david-crow\/)\n\nAd - content continues below\n\n## Popular\n[![Elden Ring Nightreign](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/elden-ring-nightreign.jpg?resize=768%2C432)](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/games\/biggest-upcoming-games-2025-ps5-xbox-nintendo-pc\/)\n\n[Games](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/games\/)\n\n### [New Video Game Releases 2025: Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, PC](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/games\/biggest-upcoming-games-2025-ps5-xbox-nintendo-pc\/)\nFebruary 12, 2025\n\n\\| By [Matthew Byrd](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/author\/matthew-byrd\/) and 2 others\n\n[![Upcoming Movies in 2025 like Superman, Mickey 17 and Wicked For Good](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Upcoming-Movies-in-2025.jpg?resize=768%2C432)](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/the-must-watch-movies-coming-in-2025\/)\n\n[Movies](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/)\n\n### [New Movies 2025: Theatrical Releases, Streaming, Netflix, Prime Video, Horror, Sci-Fi](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/the-must-watch-movies-coming-in-2025\/)\nFebruary 11, 2025\n\n\\| By [Joe George](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/author\/joe-george\/) and 1 other\n\n[![Mark (Adam Scott) from Severance, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey and Sophie Nélisse) from Yellowjackets, and Joel (Pedro Pascal) from the Last of Us](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Must-Watch-TV-2025.jpg?resize=768%2C432)](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/the-must-watch-tv-shows-coming-in-2025\/)\n\n[TV](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/)\n\n### [New TV Series for 2025: Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Max, FX, NBC, Disney+, Prime Video, Paramount+](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/the-must-watch-tv-shows-coming-in-2025\/)\nFebruary 6, 2025\n\n\\| By [Brynna Arens](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/author\/brynna-arens\/) and 3 others\n\n[![Matthew Goode looking worried with a beard in Dept. Q on Netflix](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/DEPTQ_FirstLook_Image_4.jpg?resize=768%2C432)](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/new-british-tv-series-for-2025-bbc-netflix-itv-channel-4-disney-prime-video-sky\/)\n\n[TV](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/)\n\n### [New British TV Series for 2025: BBC, Netflix, ITV, Channel 4, Disney+, Prime Video, Sky](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/tv\/new-british-tv-series-for-2025-bbc-netflix-itv-channel-4-disney-prime-video-sky\/)\nMay 12, 2025\n\n\\| By [Louisa Mellor](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/author\/louisa-mellor\/)\n## Read the latest issue\n\nAd\n\nDen of Geek magazine is packed with exclusive features, interviews, previews and deep dives into geek culture.\n\n[Learn more](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/stores)\n\n![](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/01-Issue-18-SDCC-Cover-FINAL.jpg?fit=158%2C216)\n\nDen of Geek Network\n\n- [About Us](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/about-us\/)\n- [Authors](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/authors\/)\n- [Subscribe Today\\!](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/newsletter\/)\n\n- [Instagram](https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/denofgeek\/)\n- [Youtube](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/denofgeektube)\n- [TikTok](https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@denofgeektv?lang=en)\n- [Facebook](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/DenOfGeekUS)\n- [X](https:\/\/x.com\/DenofGeekUS)\n\n## Join our mailing list\nGet the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox\\!\n\nDen of Geek™ is a registered trademark\n\n- [Privacy Policy](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/privacy-policy\/)\n- [Sitemap](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/sitemap\/)\n\nNotifications","attrs_readable_markdown":"![](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/David-Crow-Profile-2.jpg?fit=200%2C190&resize=200%2C200&filter=grayscale) By [David Crow](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/author\/david-crow\/) \\| March 4, 2026 \\|\n\n\\| [32 Comments](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein\/#disqus_thread)\n\n![Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in The Bride Review](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Christian-Bale-and-Jessie-Buckley-in-The-Bride-Review.jpeg?resize=768%2C432)\n\n*Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures*\n\nNever mind spare body parts. In [Maggie Gyllenhaal](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/maggie-gyllenhaal\/)’s *The Bride\\!*, our eponymous newlywed is composed of three entirely separate and competing personalities. There is Ida, a seeming gangster’s mol hanging out in 1930s Chi during the post-Prohibition boom when we meet her; no less than the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who possesses Ida from time to time like a regal Pazuzu that speaks the Queen’s English with perfect diction; and then, finally, the Bride(!), a resurrected blur of both personas that is revealed to be more Faye Dunaway-as-Bonnie Parker than Elsa Lanchester’s [Bride of Frankenstein](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/bride-of-frankenstein\/).\n\nIf this sounds bizarre, counterintuitive, and utterly chaotic, well… *yes*. But every tic and characterization, I should add, is played by tenacious Irish performer, and likely soon-to-be future Oscar-winner, Jessie Buckley. So it is also strangely fixating, even when the hodgepodge of ideas and influences Buckley and her writer-director fuse together add up to substantially less than the sum of their parts. At the risk of banality when discussing a [Frankenstein](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/frankenstein\/) picture, it’s a monstrosity of half-finished flourishes and fancies that’s been stitched together into what could charitably be called an abomination. Still, it is not one without a wacky sense of beauty to it.\n\nAs Gyllenhaal’s follow-up to her intimate and engrossing character study, [*The Lost Daughter*](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/the-lost-daughter-review-olivia-colman\/), *The Bride\\!* is a daring swing; the kind of movie a budding auteur spends their creative capital on early before studios get enough perspective following a buzzy awards season (*The Lost Daughter* won Best Feature and Director at the Independent Spirit Awards). And in that context, the boldness of *The Bride\\!* is something to appreciate despite its many stumbles and falls.\n\nAs best can be gleaned, Gyllenhaal took a familiar, ancient intellectual property, called up all her old friends and family—including husband Peter Sarsgaard, *The Dark Knight* co-star [Christian Bale](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/christian-bale\/), and brother Jake Gyllenhaal—and got them to chase every muse they could dream up with Hollywood money. This thing is, again, an expansion on *The Bride of Frankenstein*, the 1935 masterpiece wherein the titular character never left the lab [or uttered a line](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/maggie-gyllenhaal-is-determined-to-give-the-bride-of-frankenstein-her-voice\/). She was played, however, by Lanchester who also narrated that film as Mary Shelley.\n\nIt’s a trick Gyllenhaal replicates with galaxy-brained daftness since not only is her and Buckley’s Mary telling the second part of a story you never knew you needed, but she’s doing so from the Great Beyond where in the afterlife, she is still bedeviled by the fact she failed to flesh out the Monster’s mate (a concept that does exist in the original 1818 novel but is never fulfilled by the literary Dr. Victor Frankenstein). Thus in *The Bride\\!*, Shelley possesses Ida about 80 years after the author’s death and… promptly gets Ida murdered by gangland thugs.\n\nNot to worry, though, because around the same time, the Frankenstein Monster, who now is already taking his cues from pop culture and simply going by “Frankenstein,” or Frank to his friends, manages to make another buddy in Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), a scientist who isn’t mad, exactly, but is prone to take pity on lonely creatures. And Frank is one with tears in his eyes as he laments being denied “the garden of pleasures” that come from having a woman in his life.\n\nHe’s apparently wandered the world a century alone, finding solace only in the newfangled cinema screen, particularly whenever his favorite star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal doing a pretty fantastic Fred Astaire impression) has a new musical in town. Before you can say “it’s alive!,” Frank and the good-ish doc are digging up Ida and quickening her back to life. The conscripted Bride has no memory of who she was, or why she inexplicably starts sounding like Kate Hepburn in *The African Queen* from time to time, but she is okay (for a while) with the notion of marrying the guy with the funny face. So long as they can go out to party, pillage, and eventually go on a vaguely feminist crime spree the leaves crooked cops and would-be rapists dead across the highways and heartlands.\n\nIf right about now you’re asking yourself how exactly all of these tonal extremes and expansive leaps in logic are bridged—they aren’t. This is a movie wherein both Mary Shelley’s ghost and her fictional creations exist simultaneously without rhyme or reason. It’s the type of movie where after Frank and Penelope (as the Bride is briefly convinced to call herself) take in a screening of *White Zombie* (1932), they see themselves up there on the screen as the ghouls.\n\n*The Bride\\!* exists in a nether-realm between reality and multiple layers of fiction and artifice. Think of it as an *Inception* styled *Purple Rose of Cairo*. Or simply a mess. But within its clutter is plenty of fascinating elements to be fixated by, not least of which are the two central performances.\n\nIt’s serendipitous that *The Bride\\!* is opening right on the eve of Buckley receiving her ultimate flowers within the industry. Until roughly five minutes ago, Buckley was an incredibly versatile and underrated star of the indie scene, doing soulful work in [*Wilde Rose*](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/wild-rose-review-a-musical-drama-powered-by-a-star-making-turn\/) or the otherwise portentous [*Men*](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/men-review-alex-garland-and-a24-horror-goes-primal\/). And yes, she is unforgettable in [*Hamnet*](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/hamnet-review-shakespeare-greatest-tragedy\/). But the universal praise of the latter makes her star-turn here as Gyllenhaal’s post-modern avenging angel of cinematic fantasies—from Lanchester to Dunaway, and even a bit of Ginger Rogers thrown in—all the more whiplash-inducing. Buckley has been tasked to play a 1930s collage with legs, sometimes all in the same scene, by an unwieldy script that is equal parts under- and overwritten. And she is never anything less than intensely watchable while nearly the whole movie falls apart around her.\n\nBale is another solid anchor, particularly in the movie’s first half. More lonely and pathetic than Jacob Elordi’s recent [deified version](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/frankenstein-movies-ranked-in-order-of-faithfulness-mary-shelley-book\/) of Shelley’s Creature, Bale gets to revisit the pools of yearning humanity that made him so tragic in *Hostiles* or the most vulnerable (and best) Bruce Wayne to date. When he’s asked to be monstrous and violently decadent in *The Bride\\!*, he might have less success but one suspects that is the byproduct of discordant direction in a film which seeks to flitter between hardboiled shootouts and 1930s toe-tappers.\n\nWhich reminds: yes, there are musical sequences too! It begins when Frank watches Gyllenhaal hoofing with a top hat and cane, but soon goes quite literally the full *Young Frankenstein*, with Bale’s Monster putting on the Ritz while Buckley is doing some Lady Gaga thing in the background. On one hand, it might be the best scene in the entire movie, and on the other, it is so diametrically opposed to what else Gyllenhaal is trying to communicate about these characters and this story that it is nothing short of a catastrophic derailment of the film’s train of thought.\n\nCuriously, this is the third Frankenstein movie we’ve had in almost as many years when you count the similarly *Bride* influenced *[Poor Things](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/poor-things-review-emma-stone-frankenstein-for-ages\/)*. In some ways, Gyllenhaal is more proud of embracing her pulpy influences than Yorgos Lanthimos or even Guillermo del Toro, who succeeded at turning *Frankenstein* into an [Oscar-nominated prestige drama](https:\/\/www.denofgeek.com\/movies\/frankenstein-review-guillermo-del-toro\/). *The Bride\\!* doesn’t want awards. Yet it does seem to want to be all things at once. Which is unfortunate because in the ensuing chaos it amounts to not much at all. But it sure does leave a spectacular looking trail of nonsense in its wake.\n\n*The Bride! opens on Friday, March 6.*\n\nRating:\n\n2 out of 5","meta_canonical":null}

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Boilerpipe Text	By David Crow \| March 4, 2026 \| \| 32 Comments Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures Never mind spare body parts. In Maggie Gyllenhaal ’s The Bride! , our eponymous newlywed is composed of three entirely separate and competing personalities. There is Ida, a seeming gangster’s mol hanging out in 1930s Chi during the post-Prohibition boom when we meet her; no less than the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who possesses Ida from time to time like a regal Pazuzu that speaks the Queen’s English with perfect diction; and then, finally, the Bride(!), a resurrected blur of both personas that is revealed to be more Faye Dunaway-as-Bonnie Parker than Elsa Lanchester’s Bride of Frankenstein . If this sounds bizarre, counterintuitive, and utterly chaotic, well… yes . But every tic and characterization, I should add, is played by tenacious Irish performer, and likely soon-to-be future Oscar-winner, Jessie Buckley. So it is also strangely fixating, even when the hodgepodge of ideas and influences Buckley and her writer-director fuse together add up to substantially less than the sum of their parts. At the risk of banality when discussing a Frankenstein picture, it’s a monstrosity of half-finished flourishes and fancies that’s been stitched together into what could charitably be called an abomination. Still, it is not one without a wacky sense of beauty to it. As Gyllenhaal’s follow-up to her intimate and engrossing character study, The Lost Daughter , The Bride! is a daring swing; the kind of movie a budding auteur spends their creative capital on early before studios get enough perspective following a buzzy awards season ( The Lost Daughter won Best Feature and Director at the Independent Spirit Awards). And in that context, the boldness of The Bride! is something to appreciate despite its many stumbles and falls. As best can be gleaned, Gyllenhaal took a familiar, ancient intellectual property, called up all her old friends and family—including husband Peter Sarsgaard, The Dark Knight co-star Christian Bale , and brother Jake Gyllenhaal—and got them to chase every muse they could dream up with Hollywood money. This thing is, again, an expansion on The Bride of Frankenstein , the 1935 masterpiece wherein the titular character never left the lab or uttered a line . She was played, however, by Lanchester who also narrated that film as Mary Shelley. It’s a trick Gyllenhaal replicates with galaxy-brained daftness since not only is her and Buckley’s Mary telling the second part of a story you never knew you needed, but she’s doing so from the Great Beyond where in the afterlife, she is still bedeviled by the fact she failed to flesh out the Monster’s mate (a concept that does exist in the original 1818 novel but is never fulfilled by the literary Dr. Victor Frankenstein). Thus in The Bride! , Shelley possesses Ida about 80 years after the author’s death and… promptly gets Ida murdered by gangland thugs. Not to worry, though, because around the same time, the Frankenstein Monster, who now is already taking his cues from pop culture and simply going by “Frankenstein,” or Frank to his friends, manages to make another buddy in Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), a scientist who isn’t mad, exactly, but is prone to take pity on lonely creatures. And Frank is one with tears in his eyes as he laments being denied “the garden of pleasures” that come from having a woman in his life. He’s apparently wandered the world a century alone, finding solace only in the newfangled cinema screen, particularly whenever his favorite star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal doing a pretty fantastic Fred Astaire impression) has a new musical in town. Before you can say “it’s alive!,” Frank and the good-ish doc are digging up Ida and quickening her back to life. The conscripted Bride has no memory of who she was, or why she inexplicably starts sounding like Kate Hepburn in The African Queen from time to time, but she is okay (for a while) with the notion of marrying the guy with the funny face. So long as they can go out to party, pillage, and eventually go on a vaguely feminist crime spree the leaves crooked cops and would-be rapists dead across the highways and heartlands. If right about now you’re asking yourself how exactly all of these tonal extremes and expansive leaps in logic are bridged—they aren’t. This is a movie wherein both Mary Shelley’s ghost and her fictional creations exist simultaneously without rhyme or reason. It’s the type of movie where after Frank and Penelope (as the Bride is briefly convinced to call herself) take in a screening of White Zombie (1932), they see themselves up there on the screen as the ghouls. The Bride! exists in a nether-realm between reality and multiple layers of fiction and artifice. Think of it as an Inception styled Purple Rose of Cairo . Or simply a mess. But within its clutter is plenty of fascinating elements to be fixated by, not least of which are the two central performances. It’s serendipitous that The Bride! is opening right on the eve of Buckley receiving her ultimate flowers within the industry. Until roughly five minutes ago, Buckley was an incredibly versatile and underrated star of the indie scene, doing soulful work in Wilde Rose or the otherwise portentous Men . And yes, she is unforgettable in Hamnet . But the universal praise of the latter makes her star-turn here as Gyllenhaal’s post-modern avenging angel of cinematic fantasies—from Lanchester to Dunaway, and even a bit of Ginger Rogers thrown in—all the more whiplash-inducing. Buckley has been tasked to play a 1930s collage with legs, sometimes all in the same scene, by an unwieldy script that is equal parts under- and overwritten. And she is never anything less than intensely watchable while nearly the whole movie falls apart around her. Bale is another solid anchor, particularly in the movie’s first half. More lonely and pathetic than Jacob Elordi’s recent deified version of Shelley’s Creature, Bale gets to revisit the pools of yearning humanity that made him so tragic in Hostiles or the most vulnerable (and best) Bruce Wayne to date. When he’s asked to be monstrous and violently decadent in The Bride! , he might have less success but one suspects that is the byproduct of discordant direction in a film which seeks to flitter between hardboiled shootouts and 1930s toe-tappers. Which reminds: yes, there are musical sequences too! It begins when Frank watches Gyllenhaal hoofing with a top hat and cane, but soon goes quite literally the full Young Frankenstein , with Bale’s Monster putting on the Ritz while Buckley is doing some Lady Gaga thing in the background. On one hand, it might be the best scene in the entire movie, and on the other, it is so diametrically opposed to what else Gyllenhaal is trying to communicate about these characters and this story that it is nothing short of a catastrophic derailment of the film’s train of thought. Curiously, this is the third Frankenstein movie we’ve had in almost as many years when you count the similarly Bride influenced Poor Things . In some ways, Gyllenhaal is more proud of embracing her pulpy influences than Yorgos Lanthimos or even Guillermo del Toro, who succeeded at turning Frankenstein into an Oscar-nominated prestige drama . The Bride! doesn’t want awards. Yet it does seem to want to be all things at once. Which is unfortunate because in the ensuing chaos it amounts to not much at all. But it sure does leave a spectacular looking trail of nonsense in its wake. The Bride! opens on Friday, March 6. Rating: 2 out of 5
Markdown	[Skip to main content area](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein/#main) [Menu](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein/#nav-primary__wrapper) [Subscribe](https://www.denofgeek.com/newsletter/) [Den of Geek](https://www.denofgeek.com/) - [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/denofgeek/) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/user/denofgeektube) - [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@denofgeektv?lang=en) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/DenOfGeekUS) - [X](https://x.com/DenofGeekUS) Toggle search - [Movies](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/) - [TV](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/) - [Games](https://www.denofgeek.com/games/) - [Comics](https://www.denofgeek.com/comics/) - [Books](https://www.denofgeek.com/books/) - [Collectibles](https://www.denofgeek.com/collectibles/) - [Magazine](https://issuu.com/denofgeek) - [Shows & Podcasts](https://www.denofgeek.com/podcasts/) - [Video](https://www.denofgeek.com/videos/) - [Newsletter](https://www.denofgeek.com/newsletter/) [Subscribe](https://www.denofgeek.com/newsletter/) - [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/denofgeek/) - [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/user/denofgeektube) - [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@denofgeektv?lang=en) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/DenOfGeekUS) - [X](https://x.com/DenofGeekUS) [Reviews](https://www.denofgeek.com/reviews/) # The Bride! Review: A Beautiful Abomination Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale let their monster flags fly in The Bride!, a Frankenstein movie that amounts to pure madness. ![](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/David-Crow-Profile-2.jpg?fit=200%2C190&resize=200%2C200&filter=grayscale) By [David Crow](https://www.denofgeek.com/author/david-crow/) \\| March 4, 2026 \\| - [Share on Facebook (opens in a new tab)](https://facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F&t=The%20Bride!%20Review:%20A%20Beautiful%20Abomination) - [Share on X (opens in a new tab)](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F&text=The%20Bride!%20Review:%20A%20Beautiful%20Abomination) - [Share on Linkedin (opens in a new tab)](https://reddit.com/submit/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F&title=The%20Bride!%20Review:%20A%20Beautiful%20Abomination) - [Share on email (opens in a new tab)](<mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F%3Futm_source%3Demailshare%26utm_medium%3Darticle%26utm_campaign%3Darticleshare&subject=The Bride! Review: A Beautiful Abomination>) \\| [32 Comments](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein/#disqus_thread) ![Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in The Bride Review](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Christian-Bale-and-Jessie-Buckley-in-The-Bride-Review.jpeg?resize=768%2C432) Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures Never mind spare body parts. In [Maggie Gyllenhaal](https://www.denofgeek.com/maggie-gyllenhaal/)’s The Bride\!, our eponymous newlywed is composed of three entirely separate and competing personalities. There is Ida, a seeming gangster’s mol hanging out in 1930s Chi during the post-Prohibition boom when we meet her; no less than the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who possesses Ida from time to time like a regal Pazuzu that speaks the Queen’s English with perfect diction; and then, finally, the Bride(!), a resurrected blur of both personas that is revealed to be more Faye Dunaway-as-Bonnie Parker than Elsa Lanchester’s [Bride of Frankenstein](https://www.denofgeek.com/bride-of-frankenstein/). If this sounds bizarre, counterintuitive, and utterly chaotic, well… yes. But every tic and characterization, I should add, is played by tenacious Irish performer, and likely soon-to-be future Oscar-winner, Jessie Buckley. So it is also strangely fixating, even when the hodgepodge of ideas and influences Buckley and her writer-director fuse together add up to substantially less than the sum of their parts. At the risk of banality when discussing a [Frankenstein](https://www.denofgeek.com/frankenstein/) picture, it’s a monstrosity of half-finished flourishes and fancies that’s been stitched together into what could charitably be called an abomination. Still, it is not one without a wacky sense of beauty to it. As Gyllenhaal’s follow-up to her intimate and engrossing character study, [The Lost Daughter](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-lost-daughter-review-olivia-colman/), The Bride\! is a daring swing; the kind of movie a budding auteur spends their creative capital on early before studios get enough perspective following a buzzy awards season (The Lost Daughter won Best Feature and Director at the Independent Spirit Awards). And in that context, the boldness of The Bride\! is something to appreciate despite its many stumbles and falls. As best can be gleaned, Gyllenhaal took a familiar, ancient intellectual property, called up all her old friends and family—including husband Peter Sarsgaard, The Dark Knight co-star [Christian Bale](https://www.denofgeek.com/christian-bale/), and brother Jake Gyllenhaal—and got them to chase every muse they could dream up with Hollywood money. This thing is, again, an expansion on The Bride of Frankenstein, the 1935 masterpiece wherein the titular character never left the lab [or uttered a line](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/maggie-gyllenhaal-is-determined-to-give-the-bride-of-frankenstein-her-voice/). She was played, however, by Lanchester who also narrated that film as Mary Shelley. Ad Ad – content continues below It’s a trick Gyllenhaal replicates with galaxy-brained daftness since not only is her and Buckley’s Mary telling the second part of a story you never knew you needed, but she’s doing so from the Great Beyond where in the afterlife, she is still bedeviled by the fact she failed to flesh out the Monster’s mate (a concept that does exist in the original 1818 novel but is never fulfilled by the literary Dr. Victor Frankenstein). Thus in The Bride\!, Shelley possesses Ida about 80 years after the author’s death and… promptly gets Ida murdered by gangland thugs. Not to worry, though, because around the same time, the Frankenstein Monster, who now is already taking his cues from pop culture and simply going by “Frankenstein,” or Frank to his friends, manages to make another buddy in Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), a scientist who isn’t mad, exactly, but is prone to take pity on lonely creatures. And Frank is one with tears in his eyes as he laments being denied “the garden of pleasures” that come from having a woman in his life. He’s apparently wandered the world a century alone, finding solace only in the newfangled cinema screen, particularly whenever his favorite star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal doing a pretty fantastic Fred Astaire impression) has a new musical in town. Before you can say “it’s alive!,” Frank and the good-ish doc are digging up Ida and quickening her back to life. The conscripted Bride has no memory of who she was, or why she inexplicably starts sounding like Kate Hepburn in The African Queen from time to time, but she is okay (for a while) with the notion of marrying the guy with the funny face. So long as they can go out to party, pillage, and eventually go on a vaguely feminist crime spree the leaves crooked cops and would-be rapists dead across the highways and heartlands. If right about now you’re asking yourself how exactly all of these tonal extremes and expansive leaps in logic are bridged—they aren’t. This is a movie wherein both Mary Shelley’s ghost and her fictional creations exist simultaneously without rhyme or reason. It’s the type of movie where after Frank and Penelope (as the Bride is briefly convinced to call herself) take in a screening of White Zombie (1932), they see themselves up there on the screen as the ghouls. The Bride\! exists in a nether-realm between reality and multiple layers of fiction and artifice. Think of it as an Inception styled Purple Rose of Cairo. Or simply a mess. But within its clutter is plenty of fascinating elements to be fixated by, not least of which are the two central performances. It’s serendipitous that The Bride\! is opening right on the eve of Buckley receiving her ultimate flowers within the industry. Until roughly five minutes ago, Buckley was an incredibly versatile and underrated star of the indie scene, doing soulful work in [Wilde Rose](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/wild-rose-review-a-musical-drama-powered-by-a-star-making-turn/) or the otherwise portentous [Men](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/men-review-alex-garland-and-a24-horror-goes-primal/). And yes, she is unforgettable in [Hamnet](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/hamnet-review-shakespeare-greatest-tragedy/). But the universal praise of the latter makes her star-turn here as Gyllenhaal’s post-modern avenging angel of cinematic fantasies—from Lanchester to Dunaway, and even a bit of Ginger Rogers thrown in—all the more whiplash-inducing. Buckley has been tasked to play a 1930s collage with legs, sometimes all in the same scene, by an unwieldy script that is equal parts under- and overwritten. And she is never anything less than intensely watchable while nearly the whole movie falls apart around her. Ad Ad – content continues below Bale is another solid anchor, particularly in the movie’s first half. More lonely and pathetic than Jacob Elordi’s recent [deified version](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/frankenstein-movies-ranked-in-order-of-faithfulness-mary-shelley-book/) of Shelley’s Creature, Bale gets to revisit the pools of yearning humanity that made him so tragic in Hostiles or the most vulnerable (and best) Bruce Wayne to date. When he’s asked to be monstrous and violently decadent in The Bride\!, he might have less success but one suspects that is the byproduct of discordant direction in a film which seeks to flitter between hardboiled shootouts and 1930s toe-tappers. ## Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox\! Which reminds: yes, there are musical sequences too! It begins when Frank watches Gyllenhaal hoofing with a top hat and cane, but soon goes quite literally the full Young Frankenstein, with Bale’s Monster putting on the Ritz while Buckley is doing some Lady Gaga thing in the background. On one hand, it might be the best scene in the entire movie, and on the other, it is so diametrically opposed to what else Gyllenhaal is trying to communicate about these characters and this story that it is nothing short of a catastrophic derailment of the film’s train of thought. Curiously, this is the third Frankenstein movie we’ve had in almost as many years when you count the similarly Bride influenced [Poor Things](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/poor-things-review-emma-stone-frankenstein-for-ages/). In some ways, Gyllenhaal is more proud of embracing her pulpy influences than Yorgos Lanthimos or even Guillermo del Toro, who succeeded at turning Frankenstein into an [Oscar-nominated prestige drama](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/frankenstein-review-guillermo-del-toro/). The Bride\! doesn’t want awards. Yet it does seem to want to be all things at once. Which is unfortunate because in the ensuing chaos it amounts to not much at all. But it sure does leave a spectacular looking trail of nonsense in its wake. The Bride! opens on Friday, March 6. Ad Rating: 2 out of 5 - Share: - [Share on Facebook (opens in a new tab)](https://facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F&t=The%20Bride!%20Review:%20A%20Beautiful%20Abomination) - [Share on X (opens in a new tab)](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F&text=The%20Bride!%20Review:%20A%20Beautiful%20Abomination) - [Share on Linkedin (opens in a new tab)](https://reddit.com/submit/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F&title=The%20Bride!%20Review:%20A%20Beautiful%20Abomination) - [Share on email (opens in a new tab)](<mailto:?body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.denofgeek.com%2Fmovies%2Fthe-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein%2F%3Futm_source%3Demailshare%26utm_medium%3Darticle%26utm_campaign%3Darticleshare&subject=The Bride! Review: A Beautiful Abomination>) \\| Comment: [32 Comments](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein/#disqus_thread) Tags: [Bride of Frankenstein](https://www.denofgeek.com/bride-of-frankenstein/)[Christian Bale](https://www.denofgeek.com/christian-bale/)[Frankenstein](https://www.denofgeek.com/frankenstein/)[Horror](https://www.denofgeek.com/horror/)[Maggie Gyllenhaal](https://www.denofgeek.com/maggie-gyllenhaal/) ## Frankenstein [![Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jessie Buckley on The Bride set](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Maggie-Gyllenhaal-and-Jessie-Buckley-on-The-Bride-set.jpeg?resize=768%2C432)](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/maggie-gyllenhaal-is-determined-to-give-the-bride-of-frankenstein-her-voice/) [Movies](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/) ### [Maggie Gyllenhaal Is Determined to Give the Bride of Frankenstein Her Voice](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/maggie-gyllenhaal-is-determined-to-give-the-bride-of-frankenstein-her-voice/) January 15, 2026 \\| By [David Crow](https://www.denofgeek.com/author/david-crow/) [![Frankenstein Adaptations Faithfulness ranked](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Frankenstein-Adaptations-Faithfulness-ranked.jpg?resize=768%2C432)](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/frankenstein-movies-ranked-in-order-of-faithfulness-mary-shelley-book/) [Movies](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/) ### [Frankenstein Movies Ranked in Order of Faithfulness to the Mary Shelley Book](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/frankenstein-movies-ranked-in-order-of-faithfulness-mary-shelley-book/) November 11, 2025 \\| By [Don Kaye](https://www.denofgeek.com/author/don-kaye/) [![Guillermo del Toro and Oscar Isaac on Frankenstein set](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Frankenstein-Guillermo-and-Isaac.jpg?resize=768%2C432)](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/frankenstein-biggest-changes-guillermo-del-toro-made-from-book/) [Movies](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/) ### [Frankenstein: The Biggest Changes Guillermo del Toro Made from the Book](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/frankenstein-biggest-changes-guillermo-del-toro-made-from-book/) November 7, 2025 \\| By [Joe George](https://www.denofgeek.com/author/joe-george/) [![Frankenstein cover den of geek](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Frankenstein-cover-den-of-geek.jpg?resize=768%2C432)](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/frankenstein-exclusive-look-guillermo-del-toro-love-letter-mary-shelley/) [Movies](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/) ### [Frankenstein: Exclusive Look Inside Guillermo del Toro’s Love Letter to Mary Shelley](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/frankenstein-exclusive-look-guillermo-del-toro-love-letter-mary-shelley/) October 29, 2025 \\| By [David Crow](https://www.denofgeek.com/author/david-crow/) Ad - content continues below ## Popular [![Elden Ring Nightreign](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/elden-ring-nightreign.jpg?resize=768%2C432)](https://www.denofgeek.com/games/biggest-upcoming-games-2025-ps5-xbox-nintendo-pc/) [Games](https://www.denofgeek.com/games/) ### [New Video Game Releases 2025: Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, PC](https://www.denofgeek.com/games/biggest-upcoming-games-2025-ps5-xbox-nintendo-pc/) February 12, 2025 \\| By [Matthew Byrd](https://www.denofgeek.com/author/matthew-byrd/) and 2 others [![Upcoming Movies in 2025 like Superman, Mickey 17 and Wicked For Good](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Upcoming-Movies-in-2025.jpg?resize=768%2C432)](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-must-watch-movies-coming-in-2025/) [Movies](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/) ### [New Movies 2025: Theatrical Releases, Streaming, Netflix, Prime Video, Horror, Sci-Fi](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-must-watch-movies-coming-in-2025/) February 11, 2025 \\| By [Joe George](https://www.denofgeek.com/author/joe-george/) and 1 other [![Mark (Adam Scott) from Severance, Shauna (Melanie Lynskey and Sophie Nélisse) from Yellowjackets, and Joel (Pedro Pascal) from the Last of Us](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Must-Watch-TV-2025.jpg?resize=768%2C432)](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-must-watch-tv-shows-coming-in-2025/) [TV](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/) ### [New TV Series for 2025: Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Max, FX, NBC, Disney+, Prime Video, Paramount+](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-must-watch-tv-shows-coming-in-2025/) February 6, 2025 \\| By [Brynna Arens](https://www.denofgeek.com/author/brynna-arens/) and 3 others [![Matthew Goode looking worried with a beard in Dept. 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Readable Markdown	![](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/David-Crow-Profile-2.jpg?fit=200%2C190&resize=200%2C200&filter=grayscale) By [David Crow](https://www.denofgeek.com/author/david-crow/) \\| March 4, 2026 \\| \\| [32 Comments](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-bride-review-beautiful-abomination-frankenstein/#disqus_thread) ![Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley in The Bride Review](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Christian-Bale-and-Jessie-Buckley-in-The-Bride-Review.jpeg?resize=768%2C432) Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures Never mind spare body parts. In [Maggie Gyllenhaal](https://www.denofgeek.com/maggie-gyllenhaal/)’s The Bride\!, our eponymous newlywed is composed of three entirely separate and competing personalities. There is Ida, a seeming gangster’s mol hanging out in 1930s Chi during the post-Prohibition boom when we meet her; no less than the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who possesses Ida from time to time like a regal Pazuzu that speaks the Queen’s English with perfect diction; and then, finally, the Bride(!), a resurrected blur of both personas that is revealed to be more Faye Dunaway-as-Bonnie Parker than Elsa Lanchester’s [Bride of Frankenstein](https://www.denofgeek.com/bride-of-frankenstein/). If this sounds bizarre, counterintuitive, and utterly chaotic, well… yes. But every tic and characterization, I should add, is played by tenacious Irish performer, and likely soon-to-be future Oscar-winner, Jessie Buckley. So it is also strangely fixating, even when the hodgepodge of ideas and influences Buckley and her writer-director fuse together add up to substantially less than the sum of their parts. At the risk of banality when discussing a [Frankenstein](https://www.denofgeek.com/frankenstein/) picture, it’s a monstrosity of half-finished flourishes and fancies that’s been stitched together into what could charitably be called an abomination. Still, it is not one without a wacky sense of beauty to it. As Gyllenhaal’s follow-up to her intimate and engrossing character study, [The Lost Daughter](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-lost-daughter-review-olivia-colman/), The Bride\! is a daring swing; the kind of movie a budding auteur spends their creative capital on early before studios get enough perspective following a buzzy awards season (The Lost Daughter won Best Feature and Director at the Independent Spirit Awards). And in that context, the boldness of The Bride\! is something to appreciate despite its many stumbles and falls. As best can be gleaned, Gyllenhaal took a familiar, ancient intellectual property, called up all her old friends and family—including husband Peter Sarsgaard, The Dark Knight co-star [Christian Bale](https://www.denofgeek.com/christian-bale/), and brother Jake Gyllenhaal—and got them to chase every muse they could dream up with Hollywood money. This thing is, again, an expansion on The Bride of Frankenstein, the 1935 masterpiece wherein the titular character never left the lab [or uttered a line](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/maggie-gyllenhaal-is-determined-to-give-the-bride-of-frankenstein-her-voice/). She was played, however, by Lanchester who also narrated that film as Mary Shelley. It’s a trick Gyllenhaal replicates with galaxy-brained daftness since not only is her and Buckley’s Mary telling the second part of a story you never knew you needed, but she’s doing so from the Great Beyond where in the afterlife, she is still bedeviled by the fact she failed to flesh out the Monster’s mate (a concept that does exist in the original 1818 novel but is never fulfilled by the literary Dr. Victor Frankenstein). Thus in The Bride\!, Shelley possesses Ida about 80 years after the author’s death and… promptly gets Ida murdered by gangland thugs. Not to worry, though, because around the same time, the Frankenstein Monster, who now is already taking his cues from pop culture and simply going by “Frankenstein,” or Frank to his friends, manages to make another buddy in Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), a scientist who isn’t mad, exactly, but is prone to take pity on lonely creatures. And Frank is one with tears in his eyes as he laments being denied “the garden of pleasures” that come from having a woman in his life. He’s apparently wandered the world a century alone, finding solace only in the newfangled cinema screen, particularly whenever his favorite star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal doing a pretty fantastic Fred Astaire impression) has a new musical in town. Before you can say “it’s alive!,” Frank and the good-ish doc are digging up Ida and quickening her back to life. The conscripted Bride has no memory of who she was, or why she inexplicably starts sounding like Kate Hepburn in The African Queen from time to time, but she is okay (for a while) with the notion of marrying the guy with the funny face. So long as they can go out to party, pillage, and eventually go on a vaguely feminist crime spree the leaves crooked cops and would-be rapists dead across the highways and heartlands. If right about now you’re asking yourself how exactly all of these tonal extremes and expansive leaps in logic are bridged—they aren’t. This is a movie wherein both Mary Shelley’s ghost and her fictional creations exist simultaneously without rhyme or reason. It’s the type of movie where after Frank and Penelope (as the Bride is briefly convinced to call herself) take in a screening of White Zombie (1932), they see themselves up there on the screen as the ghouls. The Bride\! exists in a nether-realm between reality and multiple layers of fiction and artifice. Think of it as an Inception styled Purple Rose of Cairo. Or simply a mess. But within its clutter is plenty of fascinating elements to be fixated by, not least of which are the two central performances. It’s serendipitous that The Bride\! is opening right on the eve of Buckley receiving her ultimate flowers within the industry. Until roughly five minutes ago, Buckley was an incredibly versatile and underrated star of the indie scene, doing soulful work in [Wilde Rose](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/wild-rose-review-a-musical-drama-powered-by-a-star-making-turn/) or the otherwise portentous [Men](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/men-review-alex-garland-and-a24-horror-goes-primal/). And yes, she is unforgettable in [Hamnet](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/hamnet-review-shakespeare-greatest-tragedy/). But the universal praise of the latter makes her star-turn here as Gyllenhaal’s post-modern avenging angel of cinematic fantasies—from Lanchester to Dunaway, and even a bit of Ginger Rogers thrown in—all the more whiplash-inducing. Buckley has been tasked to play a 1930s collage with legs, sometimes all in the same scene, by an unwieldy script that is equal parts under- and overwritten. And she is never anything less than intensely watchable while nearly the whole movie falls apart around her. Bale is another solid anchor, particularly in the movie’s first half. More lonely and pathetic than Jacob Elordi’s recent [deified version](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/frankenstein-movies-ranked-in-order-of-faithfulness-mary-shelley-book/) of Shelley’s Creature, Bale gets to revisit the pools of yearning humanity that made him so tragic in Hostiles or the most vulnerable (and best) Bruce Wayne to date. When he’s asked to be monstrous and violently decadent in The Bride\!, he might have less success but one suspects that is the byproduct of discordant direction in a film which seeks to flitter between hardboiled shootouts and 1930s toe-tappers. Which reminds: yes, there are musical sequences too! It begins when Frank watches Gyllenhaal hoofing with a top hat and cane, but soon goes quite literally the full Young Frankenstein, with Bale’s Monster putting on the Ritz while Buckley is doing some Lady Gaga thing in the background. On one hand, it might be the best scene in the entire movie, and on the other, it is so diametrically opposed to what else Gyllenhaal is trying to communicate about these characters and this story that it is nothing short of a catastrophic derailment of the film’s train of thought. Curiously, this is the third Frankenstein movie we’ve had in almost as many years when you count the similarly Bride influenced [Poor Things](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/poor-things-review-emma-stone-frankenstein-for-ages/). In some ways, Gyllenhaal is more proud of embracing her pulpy influences than Yorgos Lanthimos or even Guillermo del Toro, who succeeded at turning Frankenstein into an [Oscar-nominated prestige drama](https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/frankenstein-review-guillermo-del-toro/). The Bride\! doesn’t want awards. Yet it does seem to want to be all things at once. Which is unfortunate because in the ensuing chaos it amounts to not much at all. But it sure does leave a spectacular looking trail of nonsense in its wake. The Bride! opens on Friday, March 6. Rating: 2 out of 5
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