Christian Bale Grunts His Way Into A Dead Woman’s Pants For The Worst Movie In Theaters

By Chris Sawin
| Published 1 hour ago

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! is set in 1936 Chicago, but takes inspiration from Mary Shelley’s renowned Frankenstein novel, published in 1818. The events of Frankenstein have actually occurred, but Mary Shelley’s existence is also a part of the same timeline.

Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) goes by Frank in the film and has become hopelessly lonely over the past century and some change. He craves companionship and the stinkiest form of sex since The Bride! goes out of its way on multiple occasions to point out how much Frank smells.

“The Bride! is a two-hour hodgepodge of dancing, movie-obsessed nonsense.”

A woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley) dies after making a scene at a restaurant. Ida’s husband Clyde (John Magaro) works for a mob boss named Lupino (Zlatko Buric), and all of these factors play into how Ida dies. Frank seeks help from Dr. Cornelia Euphronius (Annette Bening), a scientist.

Euphronius’ research and publications have led Frank to believe that she could create a mate for him. The two of them dig up Ida’s body and bring her back to life, but Ida has no memory of who she used to be or even what her name is. Frank spends the entirety of the film trying to convince her to stay with him for eternity, while the bride just wants to discover her own identity.

The Bride! has a lot going on with its narrative, and there’s even more to divulge. Det. Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant, Myrna Mallow (Penelope Cruz), are the ones investigating Frank and his bride as they travel from Chicago to New York. Frank has a fascination with movie theaters and movies in general, particularly any film with singing, dancing, and starring Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal). The bride’s actions, mostly seen as a woman in 1936 exercising independent thought, spark a female movement that not only inspires them but also prompts women to dress like her and copy the black marks on her face and the rest of her body.

“Christian Bale is pure excrement as Frank.”

Who Ida has become as the bride, and what happens right before her death, are important yet highly spoilerish. Ida is now this split person, and that concept triggers this truly unhinged performance from Jessie Buckley.

The script is borderline atrocious with Buckley spewing a never-ending line of synonyms at the top of her lungs as if she’s about to crap out every edition of The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus right there in the back alleys of Chicago. Something is trapped within her that will seemingly never leave or escape. This is all happening while she struggles to remember who she is. Buckley has a mesmerizing on-screen presence, even if the gibberish she’s saying makes you fight the urge to turn away.

I take no joy in saying that Christian Bale is pure excrement as Frank. The character is written as a feeble monstrosity ashamed to exist, and it feels like Bale takes the role too seriously for it to work.

“The script is borderline atrocious with Buckley spewing a never-ending line of synonyms at the top of her lungs as if she’s about to crap out every edition of The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus.”

The character is somewhat intriguing at first, but slowly morphs into Jared Leto as Joker in the Suicide Squad version of Frankenstein’s monster. Yes, he licks the bride’s black vomit (it’s like brought-back-to-life phlegm or something), he also has sex with her while getting a tattoo of her “name” on his chest, while knowing it isn’t her actual name.

The Gothic romance film can’t really decide what type of film it wants to be. Apart from an American History X curb stomp and the biting off of someone’s tongue, The Bride! is not a horror film. Its few moments of comedy aren’t funny, and nothing in the film is entertaining. The film feels like it’s trying to have some sort of female uprising moment, but the sexual violence in the film kills that momentum at nearly every turn. It may be accurate for the time period, but it doesn’t really add anything to the film as a whole.

The film also builds up Myrna’s big moment as a detective, trying to get recognized as one and going out on her own. The concept is literally introduced in her first scene. Just as that recognition seems within her grasp, she ultimately lets it slip away in the final sequence, leading to a familiar, expected ending.

“Nothing makes a monster movie come together like a bunch of Goddamn dancing.”

Several characters in The Bride! are just as wishy-washy as the storytelling. Halfway through the film, the bride contemplates whether or not being with Frank is what she wants, and there’s this giant standoff where someone gets shot, and she goes off with Frank anyway. This is all after she made a point to thrust Frank’s underpants monster into her mouth, and after they’ve had a bunch of sex anyway.

Nothing makes a monster movie come together like a bunch of Goddamn dancing. Frank and the bride bounce from movie theater to movie theater after every crime they commit. One sequence sees Jake and Myrna go to one theater while Frank and the bride literally go to one across the street; splitting up to cover both theaters apparently wasn’t an option. Frank also bounces around to Ronnie Reed’s pictures. How it takes so long for this detective, and his secretary (that’s what she starts off as), for them to catch up to Frank and the bride is legitimately mind-boggling.

Every time Frank watches a movie, he imagines himself in the picture, usually dancing or singing. The drive-in sequence is bizarre, though, since everyone there can hear Frank and the bride’s dialogue that was previously seemingly only in his head. Slight spoiler, but Frank gets shot at one point and refuses to go to the hospital. The bride scoffs at the idea and takes him to a movie instead. You can bleed out somewhere where Mommy can fetch some Sour Patch Kids.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is going for something here, but the problem is that The Bride! has far too many things going on at once and never capitalizes on any of them; even the romance isn’t constant. The idea of these two born-again corpses having nothing together is this half-baked idea drowned out by Frank’s sobbing dick and the bride constantly reminding everyone with a pair of eyes and working ears that she’s an entitled, calamitous shrew. The Bride! is a two-hour hodgepodge of dancing, movie-obsessed nonsense.

The Bride! is now playing in theaters everywhere. Stay home and watch any other version of Frankenstein instead.