The Bride! Movie Rises—A New Stylish, Angry Reimagining of a Universal Monsters Classic

Viewed through a Universal Monsters lens, The Bride becomes a fascinating, chaotic remix of classic lore wrapped in Gyllenhaal’s art‑driven vision. The movie theater experience is always interesting. Thankfully, I have the privilege of going to a small theater and can grab a matinee, usually sharing the room with three or four other moviegoers. Even so, I think I paid $27 for the movie, a small Coke and a small popcorn. I fully support movie theaters, so I don’t complain and, in reality, I only go to a couple of movies a year.

Today’s experience was The Bride. This modern interpretation of the Mary Shelley book cum James Whale movie was written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and stars Jessie Buckley as the title character, with Christian Bale as the Frankenstein monster.

There are plenty of other reviews out there that will give you a much better deep dive into the art-drenched, feminist, occasional musical movie this is—a horror movie it is not. That said, it does feature two of the Universal Monsters’ lead characters, albeit through a kaleidoscope prism and as a Warner Bros. movie, not Universal, avoiding any pesky copyright issues. After all, a version of the Bride sort of appears in the Shelley novel. Our review will take a look at the picture from the perspective of the classic characters and Universal Monsters lore—not that there’s much.

Come back again?

The premise of the movie is that the Frankenstein monster comes to a Chicago doctor named Cornelia Euphronius to help him find a mate. A mad scientist with a lab not unlike the great Dr. Frankenstein’s, she digs up a dead gangster’s moll named Ida and works her magic to bring about the Bride of Frankenstein. Chaos ensues, and the two are pursued Bonnie-and-Clyde style through the United States by cops, a crime boss’ gangsters and two detectives (played by Peter Sarsgaard and Penélope Cruz). In the end, all three groups come together and off the two monsters in Euphronius’ lab—but they’re monsters and… cue the “Monster Mash” (literally—that played over the end credits).

The best part of the movie was the immersion in 1930s America, especially Chicago and New York City. I don’t know what it was like back then, but the orange glows and practical hums of electricity flowing through the veins of the city, with fog and wet streets, are some of the best recreations I’ve ever seen. In every way, this movie looked incredible and is worth a watch for that alone.

Now, on to the classic monster connections.

• The movie is strangely framed around Mary Shelley possessing Ida/the Bride. I assume this is a nod to how James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein started, with Shelley, Percy and Lord Byron talking of horror stories and essentially reintroducing the events of the first movie. Here, like Elsa Lanchester, Jessie Buckley portrays both characters, though this movie’s Shelley is dead and wants to tell her story of the Bride. Unlike the 1935 version, this Shelley framing is just too dark and gets in the way of the plot.
  

  

  The Legacy of Boris Karloff, er, Frankenstein!

• In this universe, apparently Victor Frankenstein was somewhat well-known, as were his creations. Euphronius calls the Bale monster one of Frankenstein’s earlier works. This movie is set in the 1930s, while the monster was created in the early-to-mid 1800s per the novel.
  

• Euphronius herself is a callback to Dr. Pretorius as a mad scientist, though no weird people in jars in her lab. There is one dream sequence with the Bride’s head in a jar, which is certainly a callback to the little people in jars from Pretorius’ lab. We do get to hear Euphronius say Pretorius' infamous line as he presents "the Bride of Frankenstein."
  

• Like Lanchester’s Bride, this one is also the original person and not a conglomeration of parts like Frankenstein’s monster. Other than learning Ida is a gangster’s moll filtering info to Sarsgaard’s detective, we really learn little more about her than we did Lanchester’s character.
  

  

  The Other Bride.

• Both monsters looked good. Bale certainly had more nods to Karloff than to Shelley’s literary depiction. And while Buckley’s Bride strays from the 1935 version, she does sport the gnarly hairdo sans white streak. The black streak across her right cheek and lips is a stain from the chemicals used to revive her.
  

• There’s no towering lightning rod here. The good doctor uses electricity plugged into the Bride’s heart (the heart being important—another nod to the 1935 movie). I believe there was a line indicating she gets the power by stealing it from the streetlights, but I may have misinterpreted that.

• Though the 1935 Bride really didn’t have it, this movie does include the law enforcement characters that many of the Universal Monsters classics featured. I think both characters in this movie added to the story as they tracked Frankenstein and the Bride across the U.S.
  

To end on the same note I started, sometimes going to the theater can feel like a chore. I want to see the movie, but finding time, sitting through 30 minutes of trailers and other minutiae can make one consider whether it’s really worth it. In this case, I did not regret it. Even if I wasn’t planning to write this post, I still enjoyed the movie very much.

Scream like an angry goose!

It’s not a Universal Monster movie and doesn’t continue the story of The Bride of Frankenstein. (If you do want to see that story—from Universal—check out our post.) But in some chaotic, angry and inspired way, this movie is a reinterpretation of a true 1935 follow-up that we never got.

I'll give this one a shocking 4 out of 5.

And because we're Cereal Creatures and you know we'd go there.