The Bride!

 Next month, Warner Bros gets a shot at reinventing The Mummy, nearly a decade after Universal’s Dark Universe debacle. This month, Warner Bros gets its shot at reinventing The Bride of Frankenstein, which is now The Bride! Here she comes, as re-imagined by Maggie Gyllenhaal…

Mary Shelley herself appears in the afterlife. She introduces us to Ida, who like her, is played by Jessie Buckley. She’s a Chicago gal during the Great Depression who parties with dangerous men, including mob boss Lupino (Zlatko Burić). But then, Mary herself possesses Ida for some weirdness, which ends when one of Ida’s acquaintances accidentally pushes her down the stairs. It should be noted that Shelley herself featured in the original The Bride of Frankenstein; needless to say, that film’s framing device was much less bonkers.

Meanwhile, Mr. Frankenstein (Christian Bale) comes to town looking for love. He gets Dr. Euphronius (Annette Benning) to dig up a corpse to reanimate, which happens to be Ida’s. Frank gaslights her into becoming his bride. Before long, they’re running around the country like an un-dead Bonnie and Clyde. Still, Frank would rather imagine himself as his favorite movie star, Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), than rob banks. The police are still on their trail, though. 

What else do we also have here? There's a pair of screwball comedy detectives, Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and Myrna Mallow (Penelope Cruz), leading the investigation. There's Lupino's creepy fascination with tongues (don't ask). The Bride inspires a social movement. The Frankensteins are chased out of a movie house by an actual torches-and-pitchforks mob. At one point, they even possess a crowd for a dance number set to a Jazzy rendition of Puttin' on the Ritz (yes, really). Its wild mood swings make some of its dramatic points and important themes hard to care about. Lupino, despite being a justifiably threatening big bad, is bizarrely left on the narrative sidelines for most of it (thankfully, he gets his comeuppance in the mid-credits).

With Oscar voting having closed yesterday, this oft-kilter movie won't do anything to affect the Oscar chances of Buckley and Del Toro's Frankenstein. If nothing else, it might validate Buckley's upcoming award. Her bombastic performance as The Bride, which sees her wildly mood swing and monologue, is truly impressive. As for Frank himself, Bale's cockney thug is an interesting contrast to Elordi's nominated eloquent Creature. It's delightful watching him appeal to Euphronius's nature as a card-carrying mad scientist when they undertake the plan. The Frankensteins' relationship is hard to follow at times, but it's mostly all right. Jake's relationship with Ida, however, is a revelation that's just there.

A few key personnel from the Joker movies, Lawrence Sher and Hildur Guðnadóttir, are on the staff here. It's easy to recognize the similarities, from The Frankensteins' dynamic to their splendidly gritty world. Guðnadóttir's haunting score is exquisite, while some impressive CGI helps augment Karen Murphy's practical sets. The makeup team and Sandy Powell collaborate nicely to create The Bride's wild look. There's a slightly amusing running gag about red hair, alluding to Elsa Lanchester's actual on-set hair color in The Bride of Frankenstein. It's still neat trivia, though.

You can walk down the box-office aisle if you want. If anything, The Bride is a film that needs to be seen to be believed, though you might not believe it afterwards. It's a weird movie, for sure, but there should have been some concise method to its madness. If you like it better than me, then that's fine. I'll respect that. But I got to get to the next reviews.