Feminist Frankenstein: Review of The Bride!
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s invigoratingly loopy new horror comedy The Bride! overcomes preachiness with sheer stylishness. Although she works overtime to wring #MeToo-ready self-righteousness from the classic she is remaking (James Whale’s 1935 monster movie Bride of Frankenstein), Gyllenhaal turns out to be far less adept at feminist propaganda than she is at overseeing eye-catching photography and bracingly original sets, music, and costumes. That the movie succeeds in spite of itself is an encouragement in two ways: that aggressively off-kilter projects still have a route to the big screen, and that genuinely talented filmmakers, like Gyllenhaal, can get out of their own way.
While most remakes either blatantly rehash their source material or blandly contemporize it, Gyllenhaal announces from the first frame that she has something different on tap: The film opens in black-and-white with Jessie Buckley as a spectral incarnation of Mary Shelley, the English author of the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. True to the film’s feminist orientation, this Shelley seems to have a chip on her shoulder: despite having written one of the widely agreed-upon masterpieces of the horror genre, she seems to feel that she never quite told the story she wanted to. It is in the actualization of that story — which, in reality, is entirely of Gyllenhaal’s own concoction — that the movie comes alive. In the movie’s fuzzy metaphysics, Shelley wills herself into the consciousness of a character named Ida (also played by Buckley), a young woman angling for survival in 1930s Chicago — a colorful, dangerous world of bawdy lotharios and lethal gangsters. The gambit that Shelley somehow comes to possess her fictional creation is sustained, as Ida alternates between a very American dialect and a more high-toned British accent. This, not her work in Hamnet (2025), is the part Buckley ought to be Oscar-nominated for.
No less imaginative is the importation of the story from Europe to midcentury America. This allows the film to include among its sights rollicking nightclubs, decadent parties, and grand movie palaces, though Gyllenhaal intentionally incorporates elements that are not appropriate to the ’30s setting: one scene shows moviegoers transfixed by 3D, a technology that did not attain ubiquity until a decade or so later. Yet the film’s freewheeling maximalism is one of its greatest pleasures: Gyllenhaal pours into her blender not only time periods, but tones, acting …
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s invigoratingly loopy new horror comedy The Bride! overcomes preachiness with sheer stylishness. Although she works overtime to wring #MeToo-ready self-righteousness from the classic she is remaking (James Whale’s 1935 monster movie Bride of Frankenstein), Gyllenhaal turns out to be far less adept at feminist propaganda than she is at overseeing eye-catching photography and bracingly original sets, music, and costumes. That the movie succeeds in spite of itself is an encouragement in two ways: that aggressively off-kilter projects still have a route to the big screen, and that genuinely talented filmmakers, like Gyllenhaal, can get out of their own way.
While most remakes either blatantly rehash their source material or blandly contemporize it, Gyllenhaal announces from the first frame that she has something different on tap: The film opens in black-and-white with Jessie Buckley as a spectral incarnation of Mary Shelley, the English author of the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. True to the film’s feminist orientation, this Shelley seems to have a chip on her shoulder: despite having written one of the widely agreed-upon masterpieces of the horror genre, she seems to feel that she never quite told the story she wanted to. It is in the actualization of that story — which, in reality, is entirely of Gyllenhaal’s own concoction — that the movie comes alive. In the movie’s fuzzy metaphysics, Shelley wills herself into the consciousness of a character named Ida (also played by Buckley), a young woman angling for survival in 1930s Chicago — a colorful, dangerous world of bawdy lotharios and lethal gangsters. The gambit that Shelley somehow comes to possess her fictional creation is sustained, as Ida alternates between a very American dialect and a more high-toned British accent. This, not her work in Hamnet (2025), is the part Buckley ought to be Oscar-nominated for.
No less imaginative is the importation of the story from Europe to midcentury America. This allows the film to include among its sights rollicking nightclubs, decadent parties, and grand movie palaces, though Gyllenhaal intentionally incorporates elements that are not appropriate to the ’30s setting: one scene shows moviegoers transfixed by 3D, a technology that did not attain ubiquity until a decade or so later. Yet the film’s freewheeling maximalism is one of its greatest pleasures: Gyllenhaal pours into her blender not only time periods, but tones, acting …
Feminist Frankenstein: Review of The Bride!
Be honest—this is ridiculous.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s invigoratingly loopy new horror comedy The Bride! overcomes preachiness with sheer stylishness. Although she works overtime to wring #MeToo-ready self-righteousness from the classic she is remaking (James Whale’s 1935 monster movie Bride of Frankenstein), Gyllenhaal turns out to be far less adept at feminist propaganda than she is at overseeing eye-catching photography and bracingly original sets, music, and costumes. That the movie succeeds in spite of itself is an encouragement in two ways: that aggressively off-kilter projects still have a route to the big screen, and that genuinely talented filmmakers, like Gyllenhaal, can get out of their own way.
While most remakes either blatantly rehash their source material or blandly contemporize it, Gyllenhaal announces from the first frame that she has something different on tap: The film opens in black-and-white with Jessie Buckley as a spectral incarnation of Mary Shelley, the English author of the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. True to the film’s feminist orientation, this Shelley seems to have a chip on her shoulder: despite having written one of the widely agreed-upon masterpieces of the horror genre, she seems to feel that she never quite told the story she wanted to. It is in the actualization of that story — which, in reality, is entirely of Gyllenhaal’s own concoction — that the movie comes alive. In the movie’s fuzzy metaphysics, Shelley wills herself into the consciousness of a character named Ida (also played by Buckley), a young woman angling for survival in 1930s Chicago — a colorful, dangerous world of bawdy lotharios and lethal gangsters. The gambit that Shelley somehow comes to possess her fictional creation is sustained, as Ida alternates between a very American dialect and a more high-toned British accent. This, not her work in Hamnet (2025), is the part Buckley ought to be Oscar-nominated for.
No less imaginative is the importation of the story from Europe to midcentury America. This allows the film to include among its sights rollicking nightclubs, decadent parties, and grand movie palaces, though Gyllenhaal intentionally incorporates elements that are not appropriate to the ’30s setting: one scene shows moviegoers transfixed by 3D, a technology that did not attain ubiquity until a decade or so later. Yet the film’s freewheeling maximalism is one of its greatest pleasures: Gyllenhaal pours into her blender not only time periods, but tones, acting …
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