Curator Watchlist
A bold, stylized monster romance with feminist ambition and gothic melodrama, but the execution sounds uneven enough that it lands more as an interesting swing than a clean success. If you like revisionist horror, dark humor, and messy, idea-driven genre films, it’s worth a look; if you want a tight or emotionally… Read more
Where to watch: Buy
Wed · 2h 7m
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Peter Sarsgaard
A lonely Frankenstein travels to 1930s Chicago to ask groundbreaking scientist Dr. Euphronious to create a companion for him. The two revive a murdered young woman and The Bride is born. But what ensues is beyond what either of them imagined.
Maggie Gyllenhaal
Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Peter Sarsgaard
A bold, stylized monster romance with feminist ambition and gothic melodrama, but the execution sounds uneven enough that it lands more as an interesting swing than a clean success. If you like revisionist horror, dark humor, and messy, idea-driven genre films, it’s worth a look; if you want a tight or emotionally seamless Frankenstein story, this may frustrate you.
The Bride! sounds like the kind of genre film that arrives with a thesis first and a monster movie second. That can be exciting when the ideas are vivid, the period texture is rich, and the film is willing to be strange. It also means the movie may feel more like a provocation than a fully satisfying drama, especially if its feminist ambitions outpace its storytelling discipline.
The 1930s Chicago setting and resurrected-bride premise give it a strong pulp-gothic hook, and the response suggests a film that mixes tragedy, satire, and absurdity in equal measure. That kind of tonal instability can be a feature or a flaw depending on your tolerance for chaos. The best reactions seem to come from viewers who enjoy the movie as a big, unruly idea machine.
If you’re drawn to monster myths as mirrors for loneliness, desire, and rebellion, this is likely to be more interesting than polished. If you want elegance and emotional clarity, it may feel like stitched-together parts that never quite become a single living thing.
-ˏˋ mak ˊˎ- (2.5★) · 16157 likes
at one point christian bale as frank starts having a panic attack because he wants to go to the movies and i fear i’ve never related to anything more in my life
zoë rose bryant (2.5★) · 13495 likes
when this ended my mom asked me how it “fit into the other one” and i was like what are you talking about and it was then that she revealed she’d watched the entire movie assuming it was a sequel to guillermo del toro’s frankenstein and christian bale played an older jacob elordi
𝐉 (3★) · 11076 likes
Frankenstein: Folie à Deux
clownhead (2★) · 9770 likes
i think mary shelley wrote something once about what a bad idea it is to a) take weird jumbled up bits and pieces b) stitch them jaggedly together and c) expect them to make a coherent whole
Jake (1.5★) · 6452 likes
Poo Things
A similarly unruly, body-conscious feminist fable that mixes grotesque invention with comic provocation and big thematic swings.
The essential classic for the lonely creator-and-creation dynamic, with iconic gothic atmosphere and tragic pathos.
The most direct tonal ancestor: camp, melancholy, and a surprisingly humane take on the monster and his mate.
A romantic monster fable that treats otherness, desire, and tenderness with lush period style.
A fairy-tale outsider story about loneliness, longing, and the pain of being made rather than born.
For viewers who respond to camp, sexual liberation, and genre play that embraces theatrical excess.
A visually bold, emotionally volatile film about grief, identity, and female rupture within a heightened genre frame.
A smart horror drama where grief and creation become inseparable, with a strong psychological undercurrent.
A twisted body-and-identity thriller about control, transformation, and the ethics of making a person.
For its feral emotional intensity, relationship breakdown, and grotesque bodily imagery.
A dreamlike feminist fairy tale with gothic imagery, sexual menace, and metamorphosis.
Stylish, decadent, and queer-coded gothic horror with a strong sense of mood and doomed desire.
loneliness, creation and responsibility, feminist rebellion, revival and resurrection, body horror, outsider desire, mad science, identity and autonomy
gothic horror, monster romance, feminist satire, period piece, body horror, dark comedy, mad science, 1930s, revisionist mythology