Maggie Gyllenhaal's 'The Bride!' is a Cult Classic in the Making

Elsa Lanchester has been immortalized for over nine decades as the titular woman in 1935's "The Bride of Frankenstein." She's as immediately recognizable as Boris Karloff's creature despite her very brief appearance. It can be easy to forget, after all, that the Bride is only in the James Whale masterpiece for about three minutes. After rejecting the suitor she was revived to love, she's ultimately sacrificed alongside him as an act of setting the world straight. "We belong dead," says Karloff's tearful monster as he pulls the switch that sends them to oblivion. The Bride herself never speaks, and yet her visage of the sprawling white dress and streak of lightning in her hair is enough to craft an entire legacy around. Writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal seeks to reconcile her lack of a voice by giving her one with "The Bride!," a gorgeous fever dream fueled by dance, cinema and feminine rage. It's one of the most bizarre twists on the "Frankenstein" story and has all the makings of a future cult classic. Gyllenhaal's radical retooling centers around a woman once known as Ida (Jessie Buckley), a disillusioned gangster's moll who can hardly stand her predicament. She holds back tears in the company of raucous men who can hardly keep their hands, as well as their salaciously crude comments, to themselves. No one can feel her inner turmoil, that is, except for the specter of Mary Shelley (also Buckley). Strap in, folks. The famed author of "Frankenstein" laments how she wasn't able to write a sequel when she was alive, therefore she possesses Ida as a vessel to tell it. A violent altercation leads to Shelley's muse falling down a flight of stairs to her death. Around the same time, Frank (Christian Bale), self-named in recognition of his creator, travels to Chicago in order to issue a proposal to accomplished scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening). The year is 1935 and after spending nearly a century in perpetual loneliness, he aches to have a companion. In more accurate terms, Frank wants someone he can make monster mash with. Together, they unearth the freshly deceased Ida from the soil and reawaken her into a new existence as the Bride. She can hardly remember details of her previous life, but Shelley is very much still in the driver's seat. When an assault outside of a night club leads to Frank curb stomping the Bride's aggressor on the sidewalk, the pair take off on a cross-country road trip as fugitives, lovers and a whirlwind of chaos. In the days leading up to "The Bride!" coming to theaters, Gyllenhaal spoke to The New York Times about how a high-ranking executive at Warner Bros. advised her to omit a scene involving Frank licking black vomit off the Bride's neck. It's telling just how strange this romantic-crime-monster movie is that this would have fit nicely among the film's many idiosyncrasies. Gyllenhaal spent $90 million making a "Bonnie & Clyde" riff with two of cinema's most famous screen monsters, and the result is an endearingly messy romantic crime thriller with a Gothic edge. It's a helluva lot of fun, especially with Buckley in the driver's seat. The Bride is a force to be reckoned with, as she slips back and forth between her calm Chicago tenor and an exaggerated English accent. Ida may have died, but Shelley remains by way of yelling out from her purgatorial void. It's a fascinating spin on Whale's "The Bride of Frankenstein" in which the film's prologue is Shelley recounting a sequel idea on a dark and stormy night. Lanchester playing both the monster's betrothed and the woman that birthed her is a tradition that Buckley carries over. It's a daring feat of a lead performance that could so easily go south, but Buckley proves that she's willing to have fun and get real weird with it. Like a lot of screen dolls that dominated the pre-code era, the Bride is a defiantly ungovernable woman and proud of it. How refreshing to have a big-budget movie with a lead with no filter and who revels in being disobedient and disgusting. At first glance, Buckley's performance feels like the result of Gyllenhaal having too many things to say and not enough room to highlight them all; but that's what makes it that much more charming. Buckley is vamping it up big time, and I couldn't get enough. The "abnormality" of her Bride is distinguished by an inky splotch plastered on the right side of her face that acts as a sort of Rorschach test. Everyone wants the Bride, both the film and the titular hellion, to explain themselves when she doesn't want or need to. What can be gleaned, however, is a palpable animosity toward the cycle of patriarchal power dynamics that led to her death. She can't remember what happened to her yet feels driven to yell "violence" when enveloped by men with insidious agendas. It's far from subtle, but so are the disturbances inflicted upon her. At least one reality understands the catharsis of holding terrible people accountable for their destructive actions. Equally as great is Bale as the Karloff-modeled Frank. He's an obsessive cinephile who feels drawn to the glow of any movie theater playing the films of a Fred Astaire type named Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), who shares a similar height disability in one leg. Like Frank, I too get chest palpitations whenever I go too long without my cinema fix. Bale demonstrates a nuance that's surprisingly absent from Jacob Elordi's creature in the Guillermo del Toro "Frankenstein" up for Best Picture. Frank is a romantic and a fighter, but prone to lying and the odd temperamental outburst. He's a lot like Warren Beatty's Clyde in that respect, and it only makes him more interesting. With Buckley and Bale in tow, "The Bride!" manages to overcome many of its obstacles. Gyllenhaal's screenplay is loaded with so many ideas that some aren't as developed as they could be, but that adds to its explosive charm. Even the side plot with Peter Sarsgaard and Penélope Cruz as private gumshoes tracking the monstrous couple's whereabouts feels appropriately aimless. At one point, the Bride is able to induce an entire room of high society individuals to dance to a very cheeky homage to "Young Frankenstein," and it's the right amount of ridiculous. It's ultimately a film about finding someone who matches your freak and barreling towards oblivion with them for as far as you can make it. Despite its divisive reactions and disappointing box office results, "The Bride!" will have a pulse in the years to come. Its bolder choices, aesthetically and narratively, are so unapologetically sincere that I couldn't help but have a huge smile plastered on my face. "The Bride!" is an exuberant, punk rock cocktail of irresistibly strange decisions that won my heart, especially upon seeing it again. Gyllenhaal's monster flick with gangsters, severed tongues and horny monsters has cult sensation written all over it, so consider this my way of getting in on the ground floor before it takes off among the weirdos. Besides, any movie that has the words "deadly dolls" in bold newspaper font, along with a bunch of angry femmes in black lipstick and tommy guns is one that's speaking directly to my interests. I could tell you the song this film ends on, but you wouldn't believe me if I told you. "The Bride!" is now playing in theaters nationwide.