If you are not yet ready to move on from the Oscars and an award season full of Jessie Buckley, you might want to watch The Bride. It almost seems like a Frankenstein sequel with Jessie Buckley, Hamnet’s leading actress and crowd favourite, in the protagonist’s role.
The actress triumphed this award season, notably winning an Oscar for Best Leading Actress for her role as Agnès in Hamnet. In The Bride, Buckley demonstrates how well she can handle a variety of roles, from period drama to monster horror, and delivers an outstanding performance as Frankenstein’s fearless bride. While the actress carries the movie, she is accompanied by accomplished actors such as Christian Bale, who plays Frankenstein, and Penélope Cruz, who plays the detective.
According to Variety, Warner Bros spent more than $90 million on the film’s production, and it shows. The shots and colours are beautiful and bold, it is well-rhythmed, and there are many interesting narrative propositions, such as the appearance of Frankenstein’s author, Mary Shelley, as the Bride’s subconscious.
However, the movie is currently flopping at the box office with “only” $21 million garnered worldwide and an IMDb rating of 5.9/10. Some Letterboxd users reviewed it as “Poo Things” or “Girl got resurrected and immediately sensed mid energy.” It appears the punk feminist adaptation is not bold enough for modern audiences. As the title suggests, although “the Bride” is angry and fearless, she remains related to her groom.
The film is a modern adaptation of the 1935 James Whale feature The Bride of Frankenstein. Yet the Bride is barely present. She is resuscitated, screams, and is blown up. As we have seen earlier this year with Wuthering Heights, adaptations are…risky, and while it seems clear that a modern adaptation is welcome, this feature feels like a Frankenstein sequel rather than a feminist tale. The movie seems to navigate between showing a powerful female figure and putting her character’s development to the service of Frankenstein’s story. In the film, the Bride emulates a “manic pixie dream girl” whose bold behaviour in public frees Frankenstein from social conventions.
While the second act showcases a very promising “female rage”, the third act falls into a generic and limited female characterisation, in which the Bride lives for and is lessened by Frankenstein. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, director Maggie Gyllenhaal stresses that the movie is “a celebration of not being able to fit in your box”, but the protagonist is constantly drawn back to her box as a wife secondary to her partner. Overall, the movie conveys Gyllenhaal’s narrow-minded feminism, in which a woman can be bold and free as long as she remains secondary to a man. Gyllenhaal portrays women as abandoning their female rage and achieving emancipation by helping men overcome their insecurities.
In 2026, aren’t we a bit tired of seeing women reduced to caretakers? The movie promised a punk feminist rewriting that subverts traditional narratives but ends up perpetuating such stereotypes. As a feature, it is aesthetically rich and well-executed, but it fails as a contemporary adaptation because it does not align with current social values.
All in all, if you want to re-experience a bit of the magic of this awards season, or if you are curious, you should give it a watch before it leaves the cinemas. But in this economy, it might be best to save your money for the next new release.
Alys Angelier – Contributor