Tag Archives: Frankenstein

THE BRIDE! (2026) movie review

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There’s a good movie somewhere inside The Bride!—perhaps several.

There’s a good movie somewhere inside The Bride!—perhaps several. The irony is that the film itself feels as Frankensteined together as the titular creation at its center. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ambitious reinterpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and James Whale’s immortal Bride of Frankenstein (1935) clearly springs from a place of imaginative vision. The problem is not the ideas. The problem is that too many of them are stitched together without the narrative cohesion necessary to bring the creature fully to life. What emerges is a fascinating but uneven cinematic experiment: a film whose strongest parts often struggle against the whole.

In 1930s Chicago, groundbreaking scientist Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening) brings a murdered young woman Ida (Jessie Buckley) back to life to be a companion for Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale). What happens next is beyond what either of them could ever have imagined.

There is little doubt that Gyllenhaal set out to craft an imaginative and thought-provoking reexamination of Frankenstein mythology. The ambition is evident in nearly every frame. Yet the screenplay and editing lack the discipline required to shape that ambition into something structurally coherent. In an ironic parallel to Frankenstein’s own creation, the film is assembled from intriguing narrative parts—each compelling in isolation—but collectively they never quite form a unified organism. Any one of those narrative threads might have served as a more stable foundation than the combination presented here.

It is possible that The Bride! may one day find a second life as a cult curiosity. Cinema history is filled with examples of films—The Rocky Horror Picture Show and even Showgirls—that were initially met with confusion before later audiences embraced their eccentricities. But both of those films possessed an essential ingredient that this one struggles to sustain: entertainment. Each of them understood its own satirical target and leaned confidently into the theatricality of its premise. The Bride! gestures toward satire but never fully commits to it. The result is a tonal tug-of-war between melodrama and camp. Had the film embraced the latter more confidently, the experience might have been far more exhilarating. Intentional camp signals to the audience that the filmmakers are in on the joke; here, the film often takes its own eccentricities too seriously.

Narratively, the film wanders. Yet the performative dimension proves far sturdier. Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale share a compelling chemistry that anchors the film whenever the plot threatens to drift. Annette Bening brings welcome gravitas to her doctor, while Penélope Cruz’s detective—though played with conviction—is underserved by a character that ultimately has too little to do. Indeed, the performances are what keep the audience invested when the narrative itself begins to lose its footing.

Visually, however, Gyllenhaal demonstrates undeniable directorial confidence. Her eye for composition yields moments of striking cinematic beauty. The cinematography and production design elegantly bridge old and new interpretations of the mad scientist mythos. Laboratories glow with stylized menace while the broader world of the film evokes both classical Hollywood romanticism and contemporary visual flair. Particularly during the musical interludes, lighting and camera movement become expressive tools rather than mere ornamentation.

One of the film’s most charming creative flourishes lies in its affectionate nods to classic romantic melodramas and golden-age song-and-dance spectacles. Busby Berkeley’s Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1933, and other Warner Bros. musical traditions echo throughout the film, not merely as nostalgic references but as narrative devices that illuminate the emotional worlds of the characters. The moments when Frank (Bale), Ida (Buckley), and the camera operator drift into choreographed reverie feel as though they have stepped directly off a 1930s soundstage. In these sequences, the film’s imagination briefly achieves the synthesis the rest of the narrative seeks.

Yet structurally the film remains overburdened. Elements of Romeo and Juliet, Bonnie and Clyde, and The Bride of Frankenstein all compete for narrative dominance, while the shadow of Mary Shelley herself looms as an interpretive framework. Any one of these inspirations could have produced a compelling through-line with traces of the others woven in. Instead, the film attempts to juggle all of them simultaneously. The result is a narrative compass that spins without settling on a clear direction.

This imbalance points toward a broader issue increasingly visible in contemporary cinema: the challenge of the writer-director auteur. Gyllenhaal clearly possesses a strong visual sensibility and a director’s instinct for atmosphere and composition. But here the screenplay does not display the same level of discipline as the filmmaking. The modern industry often encourages directors to function simultaneously as writers and producers, yet history demonstrates that some of the greatest films emerge from collaboration rather than singular authorship. There are exceptional writer-directors—but they remain the exception rather than the rule. In this case, Gyllenhaal’s imaginative vision might have benefited enormously from the partnership of a dedicated screenwriter capable of translating those ideas into a tighter narrative structure.

None of this diminishes the ambition behind The Bride!. The film is imaginative, visually striking, and intermittently electrifying. It simply struggles to unify its many inspirations into a cohesive whole. With a stronger narrative foundation, Gyllenhaal’s directorial instincts might have produced something truly extraordinary.

Instead, we are left with a fascinating creature assembled from promising parts—alive, perhaps, but never quite fully formed. And like Frankenstein’s creation itself, the result inspires equal parts admiration and frustration.

Ryan is the general manager for 90.7 WKGC Public Media and host of the show ReelTalk “where you can join the cinematic conversations frame by frame each week.” Additionally, he is the author of the upcoming film studies book titled Monsters, Madness, and Mayhem: Why People Love Horror. After teaching film studies for over eight years at the University of Tampa, he transitioned from the classroom to public media. He is a member of the Critics Association of Central Florida and Indie Film Critics of America. If you like this article, check out the others and FOLLOW this blog! Follow him on Twitter: RLTerry1 and LetterBoxd: RLTerry

POOR THINGS film review

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Imaginative and provocative! Yorgos Lanthimos’ adaptation of POOR THINGS is a fascinating motion picture that takes audiences on a whimsical, otherworldly exploration, but unfortunately suffers from sluggish pacing midway through the adventure. This interpretation of Frankenstein, in both substance and form, delivers a labyrinth of social commentary on expectation versus reality, pretense versus disillusionment and the consequences of metaphoric prisons.

Brought back to life by an unorthodox scientist, a young woman runs off with a lawyer on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, she grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.

The most striking element of the film is stunning production design! It’s whimsical and dark, gothic and post-modern all at the same time. Audiences will be completely transported to a highly stylized variation of the real world that is clearly inspired by the gothic imagination of Tim Burton filled with quirky characters that feel lifted right out of a Wes Anderson film. If it sounds like a Frankenstein’d film, you’d be correct because the very apparatus of the film is a bunch of pieces sewn together to create a new whole that arrives on screens by way of The Isle of Dr. Moreau. There is even a nod to a famous sene and shot in Metropolis!

From what I could tell, the entirety of the film was shot on a sound stage with highly theatrical, emotive sets and costuming. Lanthimos combined the best of German Expressionism and French Surrealism to craft a 19th century world that both felt part of our own, yet, not of our world. I liken the highly stylized designs to the motion pictures of Tim Burton in the 1980s-90s with exaggerated shapes, harsh shadows, and a substantial helping of dark whimsy. This intentional move to create a world that resides in this liminal space between that which we know to be real(istic) and fantasy works to the film’s advantage because we are prompted at the very beginning that we are about to embark on a bizarre adventure. Lanthimos’ story needed this stylized version of our 19th century world to be the playground for his quirky characters so that we believe and become vested in the journey. 

Without getting into plot points that spoil the film, it’s difficult to go into the degree of detail that I would like in order to analyze the very apparatus of the film itself, as it is in many ways self-reflexive of the narrative itself. But, I’d be remiss to not spend some time on spotlighting the Frankenstein’s creation-like form the film takes in telling this reimagined interpretation of Frankenstein. It is not simply by chance that this Lanthimos film looks different that his previous works such as The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and The Favourite, he intentionally took discernible tropes and elements of his own cinematic authorship and combined it with the gothic-inspired stylized worlds of Burton with the quirky characters and dry humor of Anderson to create a new experience for audiences. In essence, he Frankenstein’d his film, which is populated by Frankenstein and Isle of Dr. Moreau characters and animals. There are animals that are right out of the latter and characters that are expressions of the former. 

Poor Things captures the imagination and whisks audiences away to this whimsical world, but this adventure is not without its rich subtext and theming. Honestly, this is going to be one of those films wherein each member of the audience may read it differently. In my screening alone, I overheard conversations ranging from #MeToo to modernity versus postmodernism to capitalism versus socialism and even a critique of the affects of Victorian culture on society. 

My reading of the film consists of arguments around the ideas of the expectation versus reality, the expectations placed upon us by the world and society in which we live (which can feel like a prison) and the reality of when the world and society do not meet our expectations placed upon it. Moreover, we can expand upon this idea by including what happens to us when we become disillusioned by the pretenses and facades that are projected by various individuals in our lives—we learn who and how they really are. And lastly, the film depicts many different images of prisons. These prisons can be our family of origin, our occupation(s), or the norms and mores of society—we feel trapped and long for adventure; we long to stimulate our senses with new experiences that challenge the status quo.

Tony McNamara and Alasdair Gray’s screenplay is mostly well-crafted; however, after a solid first act, the second act drags on and on to the point there are many redundant scenes and repeated sexual exploits that cross the line from being able to justify them dramatically to self-indulgent and gratuitous. As a film professor, my philosophy for sex, drugs, and violence in screenplays (and in motion pictures)  is that as long as it can be justified dramatically and adds to character or world-building, then it is appropriate. However, it’s when these elements are used for shock value or to indulge warped fantasies that they become inappropriate. And I must say that the sexual content of the film borders on gratuitousness.

I don’t bring this up as some sort of moral judgment on the film as much as I bring it up because it’s due to this borderline gratuitousness that the second act gets bogged down, which it could have easily been written much more leanly. Beyond the repeated sexual exploits of the second act, there are other sequences and scenes that simply drag. Sufficient time developing the story is one thing, but some of the sequences and scenes become superfluous and excessive, revisiting the same conflicts or relationships over and over to the point that it feel pedantic. 

Fortunately, after the protracted second act, the third act returns to proper pacing and delivers a satisfying resolution. However, there is a coda (of sorts) that I could take or leave. It is definitely setup, but was it necessary? I’ll leave that up to you. 

For everything in the film that works so incredibly well, it needed another editing pass to mitigate the self-indulgent second act that continues to the improper pacing. Fortunately, the cast is superb and the candid, brutal honest of the film is intoxicatingly funny. Because of the phenomenal production design, it is a film that will be best experienced on the BIG screen, so I advise not waiting until it’s available to rent on-demand to watch at home. 

Ryan teaches Film Studies and Screenwriting at the University of Tampa and is a member of the Critics Association of Central Florida and Indie Film Critics of America. If you like this article, check out the others and FOLLOW this blog! Interested in Ryan making a guest appearance on your podcast or contributing to your website? Send him a DM on Twitter. If you’re ever in Tampa or Orlando, feel free to catch a movie with him.

Follow him on Twitter: RLTerry1 and LetterBoxd: RLTerry

“The Resurrected” (1991) Horror Film Review

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Not the Easter resurrection that many of us celebrate this weekend, but the brilliant Lovecraftian horror film that you’ve likely never heard of, much less seen! Often when it comes to holidays, I enjoy reviewing films that fit the theme of the special day. And with Easter coming up on April 12th, what better film to review than one actually entitled The Resurrected? I don’t know about you, but until this past weekend, I’d neither seen nor heard about this film. After watching it, I am blown away as to how such an outstanding horror film got left to obscurity. Attempting to understand how this became a forgotten film, I came up with a combination of a couple reasons (1) it was straight-to-VHS and (2) there was another little horror film that you may be aware of from 1991 that took the world by storm (and still mesmerizes and terrifies us today). Ever hear of the film called The Silence of the Lambs??? Because of the critical and audience success, not to mention winning the Big 5 Academy Awards, it’s entirely possible that the success of SOTL cast a big shadow on The Resurrected (aka Shatterbrain). Now, I am not claiming that the latter is on the same critical level as the former, SOTL is the superior motion picture; however, with SOTL being a horror film, I believe that it stole attention away from The Resurrected. Perhaps the following review will inspire people to seek out this film. The Resurrected was Dan O’Bannon’s first feature length film following his directorial debut his of Return of the Living Dead. If his name sounds familiar, that because you either know Return of the Living Dead or perhaps his work on the greatest sci-fi horror of all time Ridley Scott’s Alien, for which he wrote the original screenplay. With such horror and cinematic pedigree, it’s no wonder why The Resurrected was such a fantastic entry into the horror library! 

As the title suggests, this film deals with the return of what was dead, or what Freud calls the uncanny. From the German word unheimlich, meaning unholy, the return of the repressed, or the appearance of that which should have remained hidden, audiences encounter a Dr. Frankenstein like character whose obsessive experiments have taken a turn for the mad and macabre. Fixated on and fascinated with bringing the dead back to life, Charles Dexter Ward (Chris Sarandon) builds an unsettling laboratory in an old family estate where he shuts himself off to his wife and the world so he can work uninterrupted as he dabbles in a combination of witchcraft and science to reanimate the dead. When his wife Claire (Jane Sibbett) suspects that her husband may be up to something far more sinister than the “science” he claims he’s working on, she hires private investigator John March (John Terry) to look into her husband’s research. When March discovers that Charles Dexter Ward may not be whom he claims to be, all hell breaks lose—almost quite literally.

Between Return of the Living Dead and The Resurrected, I am astonished as to why O’Bannon never returned to the director’s chair. Perhaps it’s because MGM did not believe in this film enough to give it a theatrical release. Since MGM also released Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise that year, maybe its resources were tied up in that film’s road to the Oscars; therefore, it didn’t care enough about O’Bannon’s second film. It’s a shame because he has a stylistic approach that’s both poetic and shocking. Fortunately, his direction is stylized in ways that enhance the audience experience without detracting from the story and becoming an attraction for the sake of being stylized. Stylization with substance, that is O’Bannon. Instead of including shocking visual material for purposes of being mere gimmicks, he uses these moments to drive the plot and character development forward; everything in the film is intentional designed to move the story forward. I love seeing the hand of the director in a movie, and The Resurrected is oozing with evidence that O’Bannon cared about every frame of every moment in his sophomore film. What this film is, is the combination of what O’Bannon learned from working with Ridley Scott on Alien and what he learned from his freshman film Return of the Living Dead. Every screenplay needs a writer who cares, and every film need a director who cares. 

While it’s unfortunate that this film is seldom part of horror discussions, it certainly isn’t the first 90s horror film that seems to have fallen off the radar. The way The Resurrected flew under the radar reminds me of John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness. Fortunately for the latter, it has found a cult following in recent years, but the former still hasn’t received the attention form horror audiences that it both deserves and earned. Which is unfortunate because this movie offers the kind of genre charm that was quintessentially 80s/90s.

What a screenplay! Everything about this story works so incredibly well. There are three genres at work in Brent V. Friedman’s screenplay for The Resurrected: neo-noir, science-fiction, and supernatural. While successfully crossing genres can be dangerous, with a risk of not delivering on any of them, Friedman proves that he is a master visual storyteller that can create the stuff of nightmares without relying simply on shock or gore. In fact, the moments of visceral horror are very few. But when they hit, they HIT! The A story is the traditional detective meets gorgeous client with an unusual request, the B story is about a mad scientist, and the C story is where we get into the supernatural. Each of these stories weave in and out of one another beautifully to create a truly outstanding work of poetic horror. Fans of direct or inspired adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft horror, will absolutely love the storytelling in this film. In fact, I may recommend this film to all horror fans, but feel that it is required watching for Lovecraftian horror fiends! Friedman’s screenplay works so well, that you will feel that O’Bannon write it himself. One of the common areas of weakness in late 1980s-early 90s horror is pacing. Lots of great practical effects, production design, and even performances, but the writing can be poorly paced and vapid. Not so with this film! So between O’Bannon’s excellent direction and a gripping screenplay, The Resurrected will hook you from the very first scene and hold your attention hostage for the entire film.

Beyond the strong direction and writing, perhaps my favorite park of the movie is the spinechilling practical and special effects! No CGI could ever look nearly as dimensional as all the practical effects generated by modeling, stop motion, miniatures, fake blood, prosthetics, and more! Nowadays, I find it difficult to buy into an actor interacting with something that isn’t really there. Oh we see it after the motion graphic artists and editors work their magic, but no amount of quality of CGI can authentically replicate the way real light bounces off real objects, then into the camera lens. The special effect artists did things that are mindblowing even by today’s standards for visual effects. While my area of expertise is not the mechanics and optics of special effects, I can usually extrapolate a good idea of how something was accomplished, but I am at a loss for words with the effects I witnessed in The Resurrected. One moment in particular that I want to mention, as I don’t want to give away all this movie has to offer, has to do with the reanimated remains of a human body that are dissolving into some grotesque creature that is violently growling and gnashing its teeth. An incredible feat of cinematic proportions! And that’s only one of the most elaborate practical effect scenes; strategically places throughout the movie are glorious moment of special effects that immerse the audience into the macabre Lovecraftian story, and prove that something real, dimensional, tanglible to interact with will always be far more convincing than actors interacting with chroma-green abstract objects on set.

This really is one of the best horror movies that you’ve never heard of, much less seen. While you cannot currently stream it anywhere, except through more nefarious means, you can buy the Blu-Ray on Amazon and other retail outlets. Whether you prefer genre or more complex horror, you will find something to love about this movie.

Ryan teaches screenwriting at the University of Tampa. If you like this article, check out the others and FOLLOW this blog! Interested in Ryan making a guest appearance on your podcast or contributing to your website? Send him a DM on Twitter or email him at RLTerry1@gmail.com! If you’re ever in the Tampa area, feel free to catch a movie with him!

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