The full trailer for The Bride! has finally landed. Avant-garde, punky, and bold, this is not your traditional Mary Shelley adaptation.
Following up her directorial debut, 2021’s The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal returns as writer/director with a reimagining of the Bride of Frankenstein. The Bride! turns the iconic horror character into a 1920s gangster. The dark, gothic visuals are sure to draw comparisons to Guillermo Del Toro’s recent Frankenstein adaptation and Poor Things.
The film stars the talk of the town, Hamnet star and recent Golden Globe winner Jessie Buckley, as the titular bride and Christian Bale as Frankenstein’s creature. Annette Bening plays Dr Euphronious, with Penelope Cruz stars as Myrna. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s real-life husband, Peter Sarsgaard, and younger brother, Jake Gyllenhaal, also star in the project.
What Is The Bride! About?
The Bride! sees a lonely Frankenstein (Bale) travel to 1930s Chicago to ask a scientist (Bening) to create a companion for him. The pair brings a murdered woman to life to be his bride (Buckley). Only the woman they bring to life is not your average 1930s wife.
The film follows the reanimated couple as they cause chaos on the city streets, much like an undead Bonnie and Clyde. While on the run from the authorities, Frankenstein and his wife earn a cult following. Their love sparks police interest and creates radical social change.
The Bride of Frankenstein actually did not appear in the original source material. She first appeared in James Whale’s 1935 sequel to his iconic 1931 adaptation of Frankenstein. Although she is one of the most iconic characters in horror history, she is only in the film for a few minutes.
During a virtual press conference, Maggie Gyllenhaal explained how she was inspired by Elsa Lancaster’s performance as The Bride.
“Something about her is formidable. And then I watched the movie, which I hadn’t seen, and I realized she doesn’t speak,” Gyllenhaal said, per Indiewire. “What I thought was really interesting was here’s this movie called The Bride of Frankenstein, which is really not in any way about The Bride of Frankenstein, and yet Elsa Lanchester makes this impact, even though she’s in the movie for three minutes and doesn’t speak. Why? Well, because she’s kinda badass.”
“In many iterations, Frankenstein is a monster of course, who does monstrous, awful things, but he’s also beautiful, human, kind and so lonely. So his ask for a mate, which is part of the book, which is part of the mythology, is really understandable,” she said.
“But at the same time, what about the mate? He’s asking to have someone brought back from the dead to be his girlfriend. Well, what about her? And that’s what this movie, I think, really gets into. What if she comes back and she has her own needs and her own agenda and her own wants and her own terrors.”
Warner Bros. will release The Bride! in theaters on Friday, March 6.
Source: Warner Brothers/ Indiewire
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