Critic Reviews

There is no question that Gyllenhaal packs her film with so many ideas that it can become dizzying. The themes sometimes pile up, the tonal shifts arrive quickly, and the story occasionally feels less like it’s unfolding than tangling itself into elaborate knots. Some viewers will likely bail when the plot begins tripping over its own ambitions. But the film also has an undeniable boldness. A willingness to be strange. To be excessive. To be gloriously weird.

The good news, for a lot of people, is that Maggie Gyllenhaal just made your new favorite movie. The bad news is… hang on, let me see if I can find any… no, I got nothing. There is no bad news.

The Bride is a delightfully insane romp that falls short of landing its message in mayhem. But what glorious mayhem it is.

Gyllenhaal never tones down the brutality, ripping us through bloody tongues, heads, and bodies—in cinematographer Lawrence Sher’s fit of gorgeously captured violence—until the frenzied finish

Maggie Gyllenhaal's second feature is an explosive representation of social disruption. A screaming cry of a film, The Bride! utilizes its literary and filmic influences - Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Bartleby, Bonnie & Clyde - to belt a clarion call against upper-crust hedonism, police complicity, violence against women, and the patriarchal system that binds them all.

Using the framework of territory as well-worn as "Bride of Frankenstein" (which, to be fair, was pretty subversive for its time) to launch such a visually sumptuous, unapologetically bold story of love, graphic violence, and rage has to count for something. At a time when movie studios taking big risks and big swings feels more unlikely than ever, "The Bride!" is willing to charge headfirst into intentional audacity.

The Bride! embodies an unconventional and rebellious nature that makes it wholly unique. Whether it's aware of its flaws or not, it's not ashamed to lean completely in. In many respects, The Bride! can come off as being just a little too much. Too much romance, too much theatricality, too much feminism — but sometimes, too much of a good thing is still a good thing.

At times it's as if the film itself was stitched together from the parts of other movies, but collecting all those bits and pieces is a sign of Gyllenhaal's huge scope and ambition.

Without Buckley, this would have been lacking; with her, it’s a very bizarre and enjoyable spectacle of married bliss.

Ultimately, The Bride! stays the course as exciting, exhilarating filmmaking, a bracing example of creators throwing convention aside and pushing their vision to the absolute limit. Mary Shelley would no doubt approve.