[HorrorScience] The Bride! -The Bride! (2026)

Reading time: 7 minutes

Year

2026

Director

Maggie Gyllenhaal

Script

Mary Shelley (original work), Maggie Gyllenhaal

Duration

126 minutes

Distribution

Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Peter Sarsgaard, Penelope Cruz, Annette Bening, Julianne Hough, John Magaro, Jeannie Berlin, Jake Gyllenhaal, Zlatko Burić, Louis Cancelmi, Matthew Maher

Frankenstein (the modern Prometheus)It is one of the books that has had the most film adaptations, partly due to the enormous success of the1931 version,where Boris Karloff played the monster. This film not only introduced Frankenstein's monster into popular culture (where it is almost always represented with the design it had in that feature film), but also catapulted the work written by Mary Shelley to fame.

There are many of us who have read the book after enjoying an adaptation of Frankenstein, to realizehow little movies have to do with what Mary Shelley wrote, because in most cases, the films represent a totally different monster, they omit important events and completely change the story, with only a few daring to approach the original material seeking fidelity.

One of the best examples has to do with the Bride of Frankenstein. In the book, the monster tries to force his creator to create a companion for him so he is not alone in the world. Doctor Frankenstein begins the process of creating the bride, but after thinking more about it, he decides that he should not do it andthe bride never comes into existence.

That small mention of a possible companion of the monster that never existed sparked the imagination of someone within Universal Pictures and ended up becoming the filmBride of Frankenstein(1935) which not only had a thunderous success, but is even considered one of the best sequels ever made. Just as happened with the monster, the bride entered through the front door, which has a lot of merit, since her appearance in the film is only a few minutes and she does practically nothing.

The Bride of Frankenstein is a concept so linked to Frankenstein's monster that it is difficult to separate them, so that even in films that tried to be faithful to the book (such asMary Shelley's Frankenstein1994) decided to introduce the character, although it was not necessary.

[HorrorScience] The Bride! –The Bride! (2026)

Within the universe of classic celluloid monsters, it is undeniable that the popularity of the Bride of Frankenstein is very great, surpassing other much more profound and interesting female characters (such as Countess Zaleska, protagonist ofDracula's Daughter) by a lot.

Generally,This character is used as a complement to the monster, but it's rarely given equal or greater weight, so when I saw that they had released a movie calledThe Bride! (The Bride!)where a version of that character was the protagonist of the story, I had a certain curiosity, which increased when I saw that it had actors of certain renown that I would not expect to find in a film related to Frankenstein such as Christian Bale, Jessie Buckley or Penélope Cruz

This particular film begins with Mary Shelley speaking to us from the grave, which causes a woman named Ida, who at that moment is fooling around with a couple of gangsters, to start acting strangely, babbling and twitching, which causes her to be taken out of the premises and left in an alley where, unfortunately,will suffer a fatal accident.

The next scene introduces us to Frankenstein's monster, who has been alive for a century, and in that time he has learned how to blend in with humans despite his appearance. The monster, who now calls himself Frankenstein (after all, it is the last name of his “father” and it is also how everyone knows him) turns to Cornelia Euphronius, a scientist who has published works in which she talks about her experiments reanimating animal corpses. The monsterHe is tired of being alone, and he begs the doctor to create a companion for him., something that, despite the initial rejection, the doctor will do out of pure curiosity.

Ida's corpse will be ideal for the plan, since it is very recent. The experiment seems to work, although from then on, nothing goes as planned. Ida is disoriented, she doesn't know who she is, or what she is doing there and she doesn't even know that she is dead. Frankenstein's monster will try to calm her down and convince her that she is his girlfriend, but she prefers to act on her own and a chase begins between a monster who wants to go unnoticed and his girlfriend, who wants everyone to notice that she is there, which causes both to attract attention and end up being chased by the police.

As they spend time together, a relationship is created between them, as she finds comfort in the false memories that the monster tells her about both of them, and he finally has someone who is by his side. Obviously, after several run-ins with the police, the couple is in the spotlight, because not only is the mafia looking for Ida when they verify that she is “alive”, but there are also a couple of detectives who are on their trail.

The Bride! (The bride!)It's a movie thatIt can be difficult at times,since there are some things that I don't understand why they have been included, when they could have been done differently (for example the "involvement" of Mary Shelley, or that we don't know anything about Dr. Euphronius but then it turns out that she was an "expert on the subject").

The character of the bride has an exaggerated level of disorientation (but also similar to the Bride of Frankenstein from the 1930s), which can be both comical and annoying. However,His erratic behavior is what drives the film,which, by the way, is designed to point out the objectification of women and their contempt for society, something that the film shows in different ways and with various characters (everyone uses Ida, both the gangsters, the monster, the doctor and even the police; the detective is ignored by her colleagues and the monster is surprised to see that the scientist he is looking for is a woman).

The film has some incredibly enjoyable moments, which coincidentally tend to be the ones that include the monster couple enjoying life and mingling with people. But the rest of the film has moments in which you think there are scenes that are missing and others that are left over (or at least that was my perception).

The Bride!It is a somewhat difficult film to recommend, as there are probably people who hate it just because of its approach. But I am sure that many will also appreciate thathas gone out of the norm(at least as far as Frankenstein adaptations are concerned) and is a hooligan movie that constantly changes tone and that at one point makes you wonder what will happen next. Not because the story is complicated, but because it is clear that, when writing the script, they did not worry about finding logic or realism,anything can happen at any timeand honestly, I think that's one of the charms of the film.

Curiosities of the movie

El inicio tiene similitudes conBride of Frankenstein(1935) pues ambas muestran a Mary Shelley hablando de su libro y de cómo tenía planes para el personaje de la novia, que nunca se llevaron a cabo.
Christian Bale tenía que pasar unas 6 horas en maquillaje para convertirse en el monstruo, Jessie Buckley unos 90 minutos para ser la novia.
La escena musical es un homenaje a la película Young Frankenstein de Mel Brooks, donde el monstruo y su creador bailaban y cantaban la canción Putting On the Ritz