by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $12.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Annette Bening, Penélope Cruz, Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard
Intro:
…. fans of interesting failures: your ship has come in.
The Bride of Frankenstein has always been a fascinating character. Created by Mary Shelley in 1818 in her game-changing yarn Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, the literary version is actually destroyed before she attains life. However, in 1935, writer William Hurlbut and director James Whale brought her to creepy yet iconic sentience with Bride of Frankenstein.
Since then? She’s appeared in movies, cartoons, comic books, theme parks and even video games. There have been so many interpretations and reimaginings of the character too, ranging from comedic (Young Frankenstein) to malevolent (Bride of Chucky) to just jaw-dropping schlocky (Frankenhooker – “wanna date?”).
The point is, this character has more than enough cultural cachet to be worthy of a proper cinematic deconstruction. Writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal certainly thought so, as she delivers her big budget ode to the character, vaguely obnoxiously titled The Bride! And the result is… very messy…
Put it this way, fans of interesting failures: your ship has come in.
After a stylish, albeit slightly confusing prologue narrated by Mary Shelley (Jessie Buckley) stuck in some kind of monochrome limbo, The Bride! introduces us to this movie’s iteration of The Monster aka Frankenstein aka Frank (Christian Bale). Ol’ mate Franky is one lonely creature, never having known the gentle touch of a woman, and he heads to Chicago in the 1930s to convince Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to cobble together a misso for him.
Euphronius eventually agrees, resurrecting the body of young murder victim, Ida (also Jessie Buckley). Ida, now known as The Bride, has to come to terms with her new reality, prospective beau, and deal with society as a newly-minted monster. Shenanigans ensue, many of them very entertaining but a lot of them half-baked and tonally confused.
Let’s get the good stuff out of the way: the performances from the two leads are both absolutely superb. Jessie Buckley is fantastic as The Bride, imbuing the character with a twitchy, chaotic energy, particularly when Mary Shelley tries to exert her ghostly influence as a sort of spiritual Tourette’s. Christian Bale is extremely sympathetic as Frank, offering a unique version of the character that we’ve seen so many times before, and feels in keeping with his literary origins. Gyllenhaal’s direction is frenetic, punchy and very engaging for the first 20-30 minutes but then, unfortunately, the wheels start to come off.
The major problem is the screenplay, it just can’t seem to decide what it wants the film to be. Is The Bride! a whimsical comedy with musical numbers and surreal digressions? Is it a film about revenge and redemption? Is it feminist revisionism about a woman reclaiming her power? Is it a horror film? Is it a romance? The answer to all these questions is “yes, kinda…” and the script feels scattershot and wildly inconsistent. It wants to be five different movies at once, and doesn’t fully commit to any of them.
The Bride! isn’t a bad film. It’s got great performances, cool moments and is very stylish, but it’s ridiculously busy and brimming with subplots and ideas that are introduced and never paid off. It tries to pitch itself as a punk rock reinvention of Mary Shelly’s classic. But, like a lot of lesser punk music, it keeps playing discordant riffs over and over and eventually degenerates into noise.
There will be people who love this film, after all Joker: Folie à Deux has its defenders (although we’re not one of them), but for most, The Bride! will be a noisy, uneven and chaotic misfire that takes huge, ambitious swings but, sadly, rarely connects.
