The Bride! (2026)

The Bride! will probably go down as the most polarising film of the year and the film had already some negative reviews and my expectations were high when it seemed to suggest that this film was a musical akin to the second Joker film. This is a remake/reimagining of the 1935 classic Bride of Frankenstein and stars Jessie Buckley in her second cinematic role of 2026 as Ida and The Bride and also Mary Shelley who speaks through Ida at several points of the flm. After being killed by members of the mob, Ida is brought back to life so that she can be the titular bride to Frankenstein’s Monster played by Christian Bale. Annette Benning’s Dr Conelia Euphronius is this film's Dr Frankenstein and there are a couple of detectives trying to catch Frank and the Bride in something that resembles Bonnie and Clyde.

Second film of the year starring Jessie Buckley and once I heard about this film I thought that the only thing stopping Jessie Buckley from walking away with an Oscar would be this film. I don't think that this will affect her chances at all which is a relief. She is very good at playing Ida and Mary Shelley. There is something about Ida which even when she is speaking as Mary Shelley she becomes mesmerising. Whenever Buckley was on screen I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen and was totally engrossed with what was happening. I couldn’t quite make my mind up about Bale’s version of Frank because it has come relatively recently after Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi’s version and whilst it is unfair to compare the two because they are two very different films. This version of Frankenstein’s monster doesn't quite have the menace that Elordi’s does. Together though I thought the chemistry between Bale and Buckley was great and the film works because you buy into their relationship.

The only real issue with the story was the use of Myrna played by Penelope Cruz. The recurring gag that she was overlooked because she is a woman felt a bit weak and wasn’t really needed. In fact the whole detective part of the plot felt a bit unneeded and whenever the story moved away from the Bride and Frank was the time of the film where I was less interested in what was happening. The impression that the film gave or was given by some that this was a musical is very misleading. There are musical moments but these can all be written off as just happening inside Frank’s head and they are totally bonkers but somehow the film manages to pull them off.

I enjoyed The Bride!  The film is the most batsh*t thing I have seen for quite sometime and its obvious that it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea due to how disjointed it feels. The film totally flips all over the place and you are either going to be on board with it or not and I was on board from the very beginning. It’s not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination but the film's flaws are kind of why I like it. I think that the idea that a major Hollywood studio would give someone $80 million to do this sort of film is such a risky thing to do especially for one like Warner Bros. and I am glad they did. I think this will not do well at the box office which is a shame but this worked a lot better than the second Joker film and was a genuine surprise.