The Bride!

As I write this, the Oscars are days away. They will certainly see Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein take home a handful of below the line awards, and Jessie Buckley's brilliant performance in Hamnet has made her the only lock in the four acting categories. So although Warner Bros. apparently delayed the release of The Bride! due to reshoots and poor reactions from test audiences, they could not have planned it better. The actress and the monster are on the public's minds, and enough time has passed since del Toro's work was released for this to stand alone as a grungy, punk rock counterpoint to the more traditional side of the story.

Unfortunately, audiences didn't go for it, and The Bride!'s first weekend drastically underperformed its already modest tracking, ending Warner Bros. run of big opening weekends.

It's not hard to see why. Director Maggie Gyllenhaal has no interest in warming you up to her absolutely bugnuts approach to the story. It opens on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Buckley) - well, from the shoulders up, her black & white face speaking to us in soaring prose from the inky black void of the afterlife - expressively recounting straight to camera how she was forced to omit the Bride of Frankenstein from her novel due to her time's dismissal of women. After locking onto a woman in 1936 she calls "Ida" (also Buckley), she proclaims that she'll possess this body to bring her horrifying love story to life: "Here comes the mother fucking Bride!" she spits, before falling into the wonderfully twisted cackle that we'll become intimately familiar with over the next two hours. Buckley is absolutely hurling herself with reckless abandon into this enormous performance, decisively locating what movie she's in, and nailing exactly what it calls for.

Shelley is both the framing device and recurring character from start to finish, although she pops up less and less as time passes and Ida settles into her new self. "New" because she's killed by a couple gangsters (John Magaro and Matthew Maher) shortly after we meet her, and only reinvigorated by Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) at the insistence of "Frank" (Christian Bale), to alleviate his crushing loneliness. Even as Ida, she'd have been unlikely to accept such a forced arrangement; with the spirit of Shelley inside her, she's hedonistic, horny, and delights in saying no to the demands of those around her. Circumstances nonetheless conspire to send the odd pair on the run, and pursuit of the authorities will drive the rest of the plot forward. Well, that, and Frank's obsession with Fred Astair analog Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal).

There are few moments in which Gyllenhaal merely takes the next step forward, preferring big swing after big swing. Out with the iconic, gray striped beehive hairdo (although there are hints of it in Shelley's styling). In with a torn orange dress, jet black stained skin and tongue from the reinvigoration process, and goofy dance numbers. The persistence of the framing device makes every moment a metanarrative commentary on the tale as it exists in our world, while it seems to also exist in theirs, as does the science. It keeps you off kilter enough that you almost accept it when the fancy party they've crashed break out into a choreographed dance as Shelley's possession seems to infect all of them somehow.

But that's thing: almost.

The Bride! is trying to outrun your ability question it through rat-a-tat dialog and its flurry of plot beats. But the screenplay is far too sloppy to keep that up for very long. It cycles between twisted comedy and mid-century noir and attempted sexual assault and thrilling action flick, then mixes them up and does it all again. Some of the stranger elements of the Frankestein story are lampshaded and lampooned, taking you out of the movie as your mind is cast back to the earlier materials, which is even more cringeworthy than just leaning in. The humor is incredibly uneven, and often deployed at odd moments that distract from the events of the story. Then there are all the scraggly loose ends; I love Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz as much as the next guy, but you'd be hard pressed to convince me that their detective work added much to the plot.

Granted, that's because Gyllenhaal deployed them more as thematic emphasis than fully realized characters. This is in keeping with much of the film: despite the beautiful subtlety of The Lost Daughter being its greatest strength, she sprints in the opposite direction in her unconventional genre flick, employing blunt maximalism at every turn. Each thematic element is loud as can be, most pointing at the absurd treatment of women with a flashing neon sign. Cruz is the detective, but must pretend to be Sarsgaard's secretary. Frank assumes the author of the research he admires must be a dude. In a Joker-like moment, one of Ida's key outbursts leads to women revolting against their oppression...I guess? There's a headline to that effect in the paper, but it's not mentioned again, so it's unclear. Anyway, how does she highlight the monsters' outsider status? They end up at an underground club populated by queer-coded characters and drag performers. The movie is loud and brash and in your face without ever going fully over the top, landing in an awkward middle ground.

Despite its rickety foundation, the movie looks absolutely wonderful. Apart from the top-notch costumes and makeup, there are quite a few exciting shots, even when simply evoking the James Whale movies. The lighting is all over the place, using a range of neon and harsh white lights and great dim scenes to craft an unforgettable mood at all times. The effects are great, and it's a lot of fun to see Jake Gyllenhaal inserted into footage of early sound musicals (it's not exactly seamless, but good enough). The score is a wonderful collection of pulsing synth-pop (think Night Runner) that mixes the past and the present from Hildur Guðnadóttir, a handful of brand-new crooners wonderfully performed by Gyllenhaal, and Fever Ray popping up in a club scene to drop a few new songs.

The Bride! is a unique object, like no Frankenstein adaptation that came before it, and like no other movie so far this young year. Your mileage will depend on how successfully you can surrender yourself and your expectations, allowing the film to sweep you along in its chaotic wake. Me, I sat there with a goofy smile on my face from start to finish, as dazzled by its ambition as I was confused by its whiffs, only interrupted to periodically roll my eyes at some bit of nonsense. Is it a great movie? No. But with the exception of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, it's the best time I've had at the theater so far this year, which counts for a lot.