movie review
The Bride!
2026-03-10
a thing i started saying sometime last year is that i'd rather take bold movies that occasionally end up missing than movies that, while more competently made, barely even try. The Bride! takes a lot of swings, takes some misses, but i love what it's going for so much that the misses don't even matter to me. yes, tonally it seems uncertain if it wants to be a crime thriller, a self-aware horror film, a black comedy or a romance, doing all of it at once in ways that feel slightly disjointed and unexplored just about matching the chaos that the opening monologue has already been teasing. but it's a film brimming to ideas, from its meta-commentary on its own source material and its ongoing influence on popular culture, a feminist reclamation of a character only known through her relation to her male counterpart, a failure of a corrupt police force drowned in cartoonishly evil systemic sexism, a visually maximalist gothic Bonnie and Clyde-esque 1930s road trip mixed in with early talkies from the time and jazz music, and one club scene set entirely to songs from my beloved Fever Ray culminating to Monster Mash playing over the credits, all coming together not neatly but messily in all the ways i find incredibly compelling. Jessie Buckley in double roles as party girl turned Bride possessed by the snarky and spiteful spirit of Mary Shelley, also played by her, is mesmerizing. her energy is unmatched in the film as she parties, dances, yells, and causes riots, never taking the easy way out, never surrendering herself to a system that wants her dead. the role of Mary Shelley reminds me of the way the game Immortality discusses its own protagonist: those who create meaningful art will live forever, in one way or another. i have not grinned as much or for as long as this going to the movies in years.
ps: i will definitely go as The Bride on a Halloween party if i end up going to one.
pps: the club scene climaxing to Wanna Sip makes me so happy as the rare sicko who prefers Plunge over the Fever Ray s/t.
9/10
