Could've (Should've) Been Weirder

some thoughts on Maggie Gyllenhaal's "subversive" The Bride!

So I saw The Bride! and I have thoughts. Mainly…annulment, please!

I wanted to see this movie because I love movies and it looked interesting! If I can sit through the incredibly dull and bizarre Frankenstein (2025, dir. Guillermo Del Toro), then why not. Plus, a Saturday matinee with two of my favourite people???? Yeah, life is worth living!!! Go to the movies!!!

This movie was not what I thought it was going to be and perhaps also not what it thinks it is? Spoilers ahead, of course, but I have to break this down into a few areas that are sticking with me. These are my unvarnished thoughts.¹ If you don’t want to be spoiled until you see it, I’ll summarize: it could have and should have been weirder, more subversive, more angry, more more more!!

Mary Shelley’s Ghost

The Bride! is framed by cuts of Mary Shelley (also played by Jessie Buckley)² speaking to the camera as speaking to Ida aka the titular Bride. Ida’s journey into becoming The Bride begins with Mary Shelley…possessing her. This is how Shelley tells the rest of Frankenstein. Or, at least, this is what Gyllenhaal uses to have Shelley tell the rest of Frankenstein the way that Gyllenhaal imagined. Ida begins to go in and out of Shelley’s accent and lexicon. Which is awkward enough at any time, but especially when you’re sitting at a table with a bunch of gross men who work for a mob boss and the mob boss is also present. In her weird trance, Ida starts spilling ALLLLLL the mob secrets. UH OH! That’s no good. This whole debacle results in her falling down a steep flight of stairs to her death. But don’t worry, Shelley’s ghosts tells us that something is coming.

That something is “Frank” aka Frankenstein’s monster, visiting Mad Scientist Annette Bening—Dr. Cornelia Euphronious—and asking her to find him a companion. He’s so lonely! That something is also The Bride herself and the “revolution” she begins.

Revolution (?) & Crying Cops

I am not sure what the revolution is. The Bride has a cool look, I can dig the costumes. Gowns, beautiful gowns. Her aesthetic was interesting. But uh….aesthetic isn’t revolution? When Frank and The Bride are on the run, they end up at a fancy banquet where Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal) a movie star that Frank adores happens to be. (This whole movie obsession is a subplot that I am not interested in unpacking here.) Frank and The Bride obviously stick out and are being chased by the police. Including Peter Sarsgaard’s character, the detective investigating their string of crimes. Guns are held to heads. Threats are made. Ida breaks into one of her Shelley/Ida speeches which is only slightly coherent. She yells about women, about violence, about the mob boss, and she makes eye contact with Peter Sarsgaard. Gasp! They know each other????? Later, we get a brief flashback of Ida pre-bleach job. Just a glimpse. Oh yes…they know each other.

Okay so her cool look and her ability to shoot a gun leads hoards of women to take up her style and engage in random acts of violence. This is the revolution! I get it, the movie takes place in the 1930s, so sure, it’s bold of these ladies to be wearing these things and getting loud and aggressive. They yell “brain attack!” the way that The Bride did³, and they smash windows and beat up men and that’s great. Truly! I love that! But I am not sure what the revolution is beyond black lipstick and random acts of violence. Again, I get it, repression and women’s rage. Cool! But….The Bride didn’t really have a vision? She made a few comments about men’s violence and that mob boss (AGAIN!) and then ran away with her monster man. Which is fine, I mean you do you, Ida! You deserve to have fun!

After letting them get away, Peter Sarsgaard confides in his assistant Myrna (Penelope Cruz) that he does know Ida. Or he did. She was one of the girls that worked for him and other detectives doing informant work. They’d get close to these mob guys, do some sex work, etc. and then take the secrets back to the cops. Men don’t think women have brains, so the ladies could just be around and get all the info. That’s where we find Ida at the start of the movie. When she becomes possessed by Mary Shelley, she learns that when these men ask her to do things, her and the other women can simply say “I would prefer not to”. This phrase is all throughout the movie as a declaration of personhood. But back to Sarsgaard. He’s crying about how he shouldn’t have put Ida in that position and how she was “just a kid…19 or 20” and it was Not Cool of him to sleep with her. We don’t really know how much time has passed between their encounter and when we meet her, but based on the brief flashback, probably several years (enough for her hair to grow, to get a bleach job and then have more growth and about 2 inches of roots). Then he TAKES OUT HIS BADGE…AND JUST GIVES IT TO MYRNA? Apparently he quit the force and he can pick his replacement. Okay…sure! He’s sensitive, y’all. He’s a feminist, too! He chose a woman!

And that’s pretty much all we get from Sarsgaard. Myrna as a character is Forthright Woman, and she ultimately seems to use her power to help Frank and The Bride and their scientific pals when all the shooting goes down at the end of the movie. Which is cool and fine. But we don’t really know much about Myrna beyond her being a woman around a bunch of men. Perhaps she saw that Frank and The Bride really had something together and she feels bad for Ida’s struggles and therefore wants them to have another chance? Since she now has power? Maybe!

I could not have cared less about Sarsgaard’s tears. We’re supposed to believe that this 1930s white detective suddenly quits because he realizes women are people? If you say so!!!!! Is that the future that Mary Shelley imagined? I mean…maybe! I really couldn’t say. I’ve never met her. But I did not care about this moment or his tears or the idea that these cops suddenly have a Change Of Heart. Really?????? Is he soooooooooo emotional about his misogyny???? Gimme be break!!!! I guess The Bride’s (unclear) revolution is so powerful that even the detective wants to change his ways. No black lipstick for him, though.

Consent

I’ve seen interviews of Gyllenhaal discussing consent and how consent is a major theme in the film — after all, The Bride of Frankenstein is, like Frank (aka Frankenstein’s monster) made without consent. I was excited for this theme in the film and I was curious where it would go. I was disappointed. Dr. Euphronious and Frank dig up Ida’s body and decide to reanimate her. Though at first, Frank declares that she’s too beautiful. Well, she’s also DEAD, Frank, so you’re kinda focussing on the wrong thing?

Dr. Euphronious is hesitant when Frank first shows up, but of course, her scientist ego takes over and she is totally down to reanimate a woman to be this man’s wife. Or I think they say “reinvigorate” but honestly that feels like semantics!

So the first issue of consent is of course creation. None of us ask to be born. Frank did not ask to be created. Ida did not ask to be possessed by Mary Shelley, die, and then be reanimated by Frank and the good doctor. These are the obvious issues of consent in The Bride! and in Frankenstein (re: the monster). We don’t ask to be born. We don’t ask to be here, but we are, and what do we do? What do we make of our lives once we have control over them? ⁴ This seems to be one of the guiding questions of the film but I am not entirely sure I like the answer it offers.

Consent in The Bride! goes beyond Ida’s reinvigoration. There are multiple scenes in the film where, when out with Frank, Ida is sexually assaulted and harassed. There’s a club dance scene that gets very claustrophobic. Then, outside, two men attack her and attempt to rape her. Later, when pulled over by a small town cop, Ida is subjected to more sexual assault that was certainly leading to another attempted rape. In both cases, Frank is the one who saves her. I found myself feeling frustrated by this, especially because the movie sets up Ida/The Bride as leading a revolution. This is not to say that she is at fault for not defending herself (that is a natural and normal reaction) but to say that given this is a movie about two reanimated corpses, there is freedom to have The Bride enact revenge and violence in ways that people are not able to in real life. Horror is a fun place for feminist ideas, I mean, hello, Frankenstein is a work by the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, who is considered one of the early feminist philosophers.⁵ Me myself personally, I would’ve loved to see The Bride confidently doing violence, instead of how her reactions are portrayed in the film. After the second assault, she does bite out the tongue of the officer. NICE! It’s a reference to the mob bob who cut out the tongues of her friends when they informed on his dark deeds. But Ida/The Bride immediately expresses fear and regret at her own violence. I wish she didn’t.

Now to her credit, apparently Gyllenhaal wanted The Bride to be the one doing more of the violence in these scenarios, but the film tested better when Frank was the one responding. Which is……telling about where we are. I guess Frank curbstomping that one guy is more acceptable that if The Bride was going feral? That’s where me and test audiences differ (and not the only area, I’m sure). I wanted her to unleash hell. Instead, these moments felt like the sister of Promising Young Woman (2020, dir. Emerald Fennell), a film I refused to see on the grounds that I knew it would not deliver the revenge promised.⁶

Consent also plays a role in Ida/The Bride’s name. At the beginning of the film, Mary Shelley asks Ida what her name is. She repeats this question throughout the film, talking to Ida/The Bride herself. Is she Ida? Is she Penny, the name given to her by Frank? Is she The Bride of Frankenstein? At the end of the movie, Ida proudly declares that she is simply The Bride.

…………okay?

I found this incredibly underwhelming. Maybe this is her claiming the title the newspaper has given her and the name that the women enacting violence in her honour cherish. But…still. After learning that everything Frank told her about their relationship and history is a lie. That she was, in fact, Ida—who knew the detective and watched all her friends disappear and then died—and that everything she had done up until this point stemmed from lies that Frank told her, her brave decision is to claim the title The Bride. Not The Bride of Frankenstein, though, y’all! Just The Bride. Because feminism. He asked her to marry him again properly and she said “I would prefer not to”. More feminism!!!!!

The film ultimately ends with a police raid and a shootout, where The Bride falls (after being shot like Willem Dafoe in Platoon) on top of an already shot Frank on the very table where she was reanimated. But wait! Sparks! Science! Annette Bening! Their hands are twitching. And….awwwwwwwww they’re holding hands.

Fin.

BOOOOOO!!! TOMATO TOMATO TOMATO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! UGHHHHHHHHHH.

Okay, fine. I get it. I mean, if the impetus of the film is that Mary Shelley, a woman who kept her husband’s literal heart, possess Ida and in some ways guides her decisions, I guess it makes sense for The Bride to move past how her and Frank met and instead hold on to what they have found together: love. And they did have some cute times together! Those scenes were kinda fun in a different way. But…REALLY?! He lied to you!!!!!!!!!!!! A BUNCH!!!!!! Here could be where I need to check myself a bit, but also maybe not?!? Do I really have to?! Love is beautiful. Truly. Being in love is phenomenal. The deep love of true friendships moves me to tears. And we do indeed need love in any revolution. But STILL UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH COME ON! THEY JUST HOLD HANDS?! THAT’S THE MOVIE?!⁷ I wanted RAGE. I wanted ANGER. I wanted HUNGER. I wanted something messier and uglier. I wanted whatever version Gyllenhaal thinks she made. But I would need my brain possessed by somebody else to get from this movie what the writer/director thinks we should take from it.

To be clear, I never thought this movie would blow my mind. The same way that I don’t understand why everybody cried at Barbie and kept touting its feminist chops, I didn’t expected The Bride! to find its way onto my feminist theory syllabus. But I think this story had so much potential to be more unwavering in its commitments to Ida’s complexity and independence. The return to hand holding and The Bride’s continuous sadness and confusion around her and Frank’s violence bored me. I don’t want gentle, contrite, and soft. Fascism is already selling us soft, demure, bullshit gender norms of Strong Men and Gentle Woman. I wanted more.

The pre/during credit scene is all the women dressed like The Bride collecting the tongue of the mob boss who stole the tongues of the women around him. I would’ve loved to see Ida there.

2.5 stars.

If watching this movie brings you joy, I am thrilled for you. There are movies I love that other people do not. There are movies people love that I do not. If, in the same way that Barbie might have inspired some young women, this movie stirs something in somebody for the better, that’s great. My take is not the be-all-end-all take on this film. It’s just my take.

I would also say, if this movie flops it’s not because there is no desire for angry women on screen and I fear any failure will be spun into reasons not to fund more outrageous art. If this movie does poorly it’s not because of any “feminist” reimagining, it’s because it’s a poorly done and incoherent story.

1. Substack can change “post” to “article” all they want. This is just my opinion based on the knowledge I have and my social location. If I were writing a more formal “article”, you’d know!!!

2. To be clear, Jessie Buckley’s performance was incredible. She is a very captivating actor and was fascinating to watch.

3. Gyllenhaal has also made comments about disability in this movie, with The Bride’s speech patterns as a reference to people in her life with Tourette syndrome. As well as Ronnie Reed’s one-short-leg from childhood polio a reference to a family member who had polio as a child and had to have custom shoes made. Like queer theory and feminist studies, disability studies has a lot of interesting things to say about horror movies and I am sure somebody is writing something about these elements! I’d be very curious to read more from somebody about the speech angle.

4. The movie-going meta element…I am sure somebody is writing something eloquent about it as we speak! Personally, I found it simply meh. Other than yeah….I also love the movies, Frank. It can be a place for connection when you have none. He was deeply lonely. I get it. But….it was used so much that it made me question if I did get it???

5. I feel no preciousness around Wollstonecraft or her legacy. I take all work of all eras of white feminist thought with a heap of salt. Some still have things to offer us. Some are merely time capsules.

6. I know how this movie goes and I have read enough analyses of it that I know I was right to avoid it.

7. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014, dir. Ana Lily Amirpour) is a horror movie that perfectly blends a woman’s rage with a love story. Watch that!!!