The Bride! hits theaters on March 6, offering an energetic, violent spin on Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, two of Hollywood’s most important monster movies. But when it came to bringing her versions of the characters to life, writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal had a specific mantra in mind for Frank (Christian Bale) and the Bride (Jessie Buckley): they had to still look undeniably human.
Now, Frank is definitely the more unfortunate of the two; he was, after all, stitched together from dead body parts, and in The Bride! we learn he’s been lurching around on Earth, hiding his face as much as possible, for 100 or so years.
The Bride, who goes by a few different names in the movie, is fresh out of the grave—but though she’s a single body that’s been reanimated, she does have some telltale signs, especially the black splatter that stains her face as a result of her miraculous reawakening.
“We knew that it had to be iconic, and at the same time I wanted it to be very real and very human,” Gyllenhaal told the Hollywood Reporter when asked about the Bride’s appearance. Aside from her electrified hairdo, she hardly resembles Elsa Lanchester’s classic take on the character. “She wears one dress for the entire movie—that dress, how do you sweat in it, how do you live in it? And get stains and get torn and ripped.”
For Frank, Gyllenhaal said, the approach was very similar. “I wanted him to be scary like a monster but very real. And I think it’s more upsetting to see a face that looks like it actually could have been sewn together—the neck sewn onto the face and then something that looks like a Halloween mask,” she said. “So we wanted it to be that almost graphic novel iconic vibe mixed with the very, very real.”
You do get a glimpse of Frank’s jigsaw puzzle of a body in the movie, too, and it’s also a scary yet believable sight. Behold both monsters at your own peril when The Bride! hits theaters March 6.
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