The Bride! (2026)

Gyllenhaal delivers a ferocious, gory, high-energy retelling packed with female rage, musical numbers, chases and shocks that hits the cultural moment perfectly. Buckley gives a show-stopping, range-pushing lead performance in this wild, expensive spectacle.

The critic finds the film a bizarre and enjoyable black comedy reimagining, with Maggie Gyllenhaal's direction indulging in homages and twists. Jessie Buckley's barnstorming, outrageous performance as the bride is singled out as the element that makes the spectacle work.

The critic hails Gyllenhaal's bold genre-blending feminist riff, praising Buckley's brilliantly unhinged lead performance and the film's visually exciting, funny, and thought-provoking qualities as a big-budget accessible success.

The critic describes Gyllenhaal's audacious take as a bold, brash and modern Prometheus that remains interesting even when messy and excessive, highlighting the meta conceit, strong cast chemistry and potent reinvention of the source material.

The critic finds the film an energetic, handsome, and performer-driven time-shifting riff on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein story that holds interest despite rough patches. They single out the magnetic lead performances and the director’s bold, genre-hopping approach for praise while noting issues with tonal and intellectual coherence.

The critic describes the film as a messy but fascinating patchwork like the monster himself, a chaotic yet oddly beautiful collision of ideas. Jessie Buckley's immense, feral performance in the title role is singled out for making it viable and compelling.

The critic finds the reimagining ambitious and stylish with strong performances, especially Buckley's mesmerising turn, but notes it fails to fully cohere as subplots and genre elements get in the way of the central story.

The critic describes the film as a scrappy punk feminist take-off on the Frankenstein myth with audacity and strong lead performances but criticizes its lumbering pace and insufficient storytelling spine. They single out the magnetic chemistry between Buckley and Bale and the reimagining of perversity for praise while faulting the static rhythm and didactic elements.

The critic calls the film a misguided and incoherent misfire that prompts second-hand embarrassment, faulting its dated feminist gestures, continuity errors, and failure to deliver on its radical claims despite Buckley's energetic performance.

Buckley delivers another tremendous, shape-shifting performance full of life and wit, but the script is a rambling dud that piles on heavy-handed girlboss messaging and fails to cohere as one film. Gyllenhaal needed to pick one idea instead of trying to make multiple films at once.

The critic calls it a kinky, shallow and confused mess that wastes Buckley’s talents despite her wildly arresting performance. The lack of a decent story for the anti-heroine and overall shallowness at the core are singled out for complaint.

A huge swing of enormous ambition that is also an incoherent disaster, with a confounding opening and a performance by Buckley that makes her look like an actor with only one weird trick. Its feminism is vague and mild-mannered underneath the posturing.

The film is a chaotic, incoherent mash-up of genres that fails to cohere despite flashes of visual flair and strong performances. It is a crushing disappointment from Gyllenhaal that obscures her earlier strengths.

The critic calls it an unruly blast and weirdly marvellous ode to the unruly, careening through homages and a feminist twist. Gyllenhaal’s visuals and Buckley’s fantastic performance are singled out for praise.

An ambitious feminist opera that feels unintentionally tailored to align with neighboring DC properties, with Jessie Buckley's anguished scream of a performance unable to sustain it. The film is a wokified, Joker-fied folie-à-deux zonked on its own rage.

A messy punk tale and shotgun blast of a movie that gives Mary Shelley her due through a roaring, feral expression of repressed female thought and emotion, with fealty to the protagonist's defiant emotions rather than gothic horror conventions.

The film is an over-conceptualized and over-intellectualized feminist Frankenstein spin that becomes a joyless slog, with a shouty, mannered central performance by Buckley that mutes any power. It earns credit for ambition and stylish visuals but is best left at the altar.

The critic deems it a howling misfire and flashy, incoherent Frankenstein reboot that abandons artistic integrity. Jessie Buckley’s central performance is singled out as catastrophically poor and ill-judged.

The critic finds the film a wild, irreverent, and unique adaptation that overflows with chaotic energy and benefits from strong lead performances. The feminist message is sometimes heavy-handed and lacks nuance.

The critic finds the film an extremely messy but inventive and unhinged delight that mixes genres in an irreverent way. They single out its audacious, meta approach to the Frankenstein story and willingness to take big swings.

The critic calls it a messy-if-inventive meta feminist monster movie and scrappy, rebellious, arty cousin to Guillermo del Toro’s take, praising its unique singular quality, thought-provoking re-assessment of Shelley, bonkers feminist call-to-arms, raucous score, and standout dance sequences amid scattershot elements. They note it is wilder and weirder than Gyllenhaal’s prior work.

Gyllenhaal's ambitious, genre-bending take on the material is the strangest big-studio release of the year and rewards with its eccentricity and refusal to ingratiate. The film lacks coherence and pushes its allegory too bluntly at times.

The critic finds the premise fun as a response to the 1935 film and meditation on muzzled women in cinema but argues the divisive movie fails to follow through on its bold claims, instead throwing Mary Shelley under the bus by misrepresenting her novel and underestimating its depth and empathy. They see it as only half-understanding the source material while presenting female rebellion in a shallow way.

Gyllenhaal reinvents the Frankenstein story as an original, punkish monster mashup and love story with big ideas and a worthy feminist bent, handled on a grand scale after her smaller debut. Buckley gives a sensational, fearless generational performance as the title character who finds her own voice, with strong support from Bale as a soulful monster and the rest of the cast.

The critic views the film as a chaotic, messy but boldly ambitious Frankenstein riff stitched together from wild ideas and influences, with strong, watchable central performances from Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale that anchor the proceedings. They appreciate its daring swing and wacky beauty despite numerous stumbles and a sense that it amounts to less than the sum of its parts.

The critic calls the film a glorious, invigorating pastiche that rights wrongs in prior Frankenstein adaptations by centering Mary Shelley's feminist perspectives. Buckley delivers a nuanced yet rampantly invigorating lead performance that anchors the monstrous masterwork, especially in its phantasmagoric first half.