At a Glance
- March 6 release for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s punk-gothic reimagining of the Bride of Frankenstein
- Jessie Buckley embodies a resurrected woman who refuses the “of Frankenstein” label
- Film blends 1930s glamour with downtown-NYC 1981 attitude to explore identity and expression
**Why it matters: A female-led creative team flips a century-old monster myth into a story about women reclaiming voice and agency.
The first trailer for The Bride! dropped today, revealing a fierce, punk-soaked heroine who insists on standing alone. Jessie Buckley-riding acclaim for her stage performance in Hamnet-stars as the reanimated woman determined to discover who she is after clawing her way back to life.
Writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal said she fought the urge to tailor the part for Buckley while scripting. “I had worked with Jessie in The Lost Daughter, my first film,” she told reporters at a press conference attended by io9. “She is really brilliant in that movie. I loved her, and I think we both knew when we worked together that we were kindred spirits.”
Gyllenhaal described their on-set shorthand as “completely pure,” noting that Buckley’s grasp of emotional complexity sealed the casting choice. “I had to keep myself from writing this part for her because I thought if I write it for her, maybe I’ll limit what it could be,” she said. “Then I wrote it, and I was like, ‘Okay, it’s only Jessie.'”
The character’s arc, Gyllenhaal explained, begins with a woman silenced in life. “She plays somebody who in her life was not able to get herself expressed before she dies … and so she comes back as someone with a lot to say,” the filmmaker said. “Without any point of reference, without any compass to figure out who she is … part of it is just to figure out who she is.”
Style touchstones for the project include Bonnie and Clyde, Badlands, Metropolis, and Wild at Heart, though Gyllenhaal emphasized she let her “mind open up and roam.” The setting is nominally the 1930s, yet filtered through a raucous, time-bending lens.
“I chose the ’30s because I love it aesthetically, and the movies are so fantasy,” she noted. “A lot of the movie is about the difference between fantasy versus reality, and what is the real pleasure of a love affair that’s based in reality.”
Frankenstein’s monster, portrayed as lonely and isolated, fixates on a movie-star illusion. “His primary relationship is, before we meet him, with a movie star,” Gyllenhaal said. “Because a movie star is someone you can imagine you have a relationship with, and they don’t know you at all.”
This collision of illusion and identity feeds the film’s punk ethos. “It is set in the ’30s, but it’s not exactly set in the ’30s … it’s the ’30s by way of downtown New York, 1981, and now,” Gyllenhaal said. She confirmed the punk label: “Is punk just a celebration of something that doesn’t fit easily into a box? Then yeah, the movie’s totally punk.”
Christian Bale, who costars, sent her Sid Vicious imagery during pre-production, cementing the tone. “There is just an aspect of straight-up punk in the movie,” she added.
Key Takeaways
- The Bride! opens March 6, positioning Buckley’s award-winning momentum for box-office impact.
- Gyllenhaal’s second directorial effort frames the Bride as a woman demanding self-definition rather than existing as an appendage to the monster.
- Visual and thematic nods to classic cinema collide with a punk-rock sensibility to reexamine love, loneliness, and identity.
Expect a monster movie that is less about stitches and lightning than about the jolt of a woman resurrected-finally free to ask, “Who am I?”
