The Bride! (2026)

The Bride Refuses to Behave - The Bride! review by griggs

I spent most of this grinning like someone who had wandered into a very expensive séance and decided to stay for cocktails.

The Bride! is 100% bonkers, 0% coherent, and somehow a total riot. Maggie Gyllenhaal throws Frankenstein, gangster pictures, gothic camp, black comedy and old Hollywood into one big beautiful mess, then just lets it rip. The plot does not so much unfold as swerve wildly from one deranged idea to the next, but the film has enough nerve and style to make that feel like part of the deal.

What really won me over was how shamelessly movie-mad it is. References keep popping up, from Ida Lupino to Bringing Up Baby. Christian Bale’s Frankenstein is not just lonely and battered but completely besotted with cinema, which gives him an odd, lovely sweetness. He feels like a monster stitched together from sorrow, longing and too many late-night screenings.

Jessie Buckley is the film’s chaos engine. Frizzy-haired, black-tongued and gloriously unhinged, she attacks the role with such manic glee that she gives the whole thing its pulse. Bale is terrific opposite her, all mournful awkwardness and shambling devotion.

Another thing the film makes very clear is its feminist streak. Buckley’s Bride has no interest in being anyone’s passive creation or tragic accessory, and the film keeps pushing the story away from the usual male-centred angle towards her anger, agency and refusal to play along. At one point she even repeats “Me too,” which lands with all the subtlety of a brick through a window. Blunt, cheeky and fully in tune with the film’s gleeful chaos.

No, it does not really hang together. It lurches, overreaches and keeps getting distracted by its own weird ideas. But it commits so fully to the bit, and seems to be having such a wild time doing it, that complaining about the mess starts to feel beside the point. A glorious muddle. I had a blast.