A fascinating concept that immediately becomes nonsense in execution, it’s almost impossible to believe that Maggie Gyllenhaal wrote The Bride!, as its the opposite of the subtlety and patience of The Lost Daughter. It attempts to be a more feminist take on the Bride of Frankenstein, while acknowledging other cinematic renditions of the story, including James Whale’s Frankenstein and even Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein, but it throws too much at the wall and none of it sticks at all. Not a single scene, story thread, character arc, or creative swing feels earned or even sensical in the final product. Even Oscar winners Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, who are throwing themselves into these silly and unhinged performances, don’t get close to saving any of it.

The film aims for many themes that it fails to explore with any sort of substance, like female liberation or having one’s identity forced upon you. The detective characters played by Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz feel completely unnatural, and the dialogue is the film’s most glaring weakness; unsubtle, and completely groan-worthy at times. In another film, this level of cinematography (done by Oscar-nominated Lawrence Sher who was acclaimed for his neo-noir approach to Joker), makeup, and production design would have stunned, but here it just feels even more like a shame that the material at the center of the story for such a nice-looking production is so pointless and frustrating. This feels like it was only made because of a lot of good will for a known filmmaker, and at some point, you stop even trying to figure out who this movie was made for and what the point of it all is.