New horror-romance The Bride! breathes new life into Frankenstein’s monster and his unwitting paramour as Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley’s lead characters wreak havoc across a ’30s Chicago.
While the latter really only had Elsa Lanchester’s version from the 1935 classic to stand-up to (Jennifer Beals and Helena Bonham Carter’s takes never really made much of an impact), Bale had the unenviable task of following up the likes of Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, and the now Oscar-nominated Jacob Elordi.
“Obviously Boris Karloff’s monster is the iconic image but Mary Shelley set the tone with a very different description,” Bale explains. “I decided it was going to be a real man – man, not monster. A man who had been treated abysmally; emotional, physical experimentation and abuse. Mary Shelley writes a book based on the science of Galvani coming in with the electric probes on the frogs, you know? And she gets some of it right but she gets a little bit wrong, right?
Written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Bride! sees Buckley’s Mary Shelley insist she has more story to tell following the success of her influential 1818 novel Frankenstein – despite her having died from a debilitating brain tumor over 80 years prior. With that, she catches us up to Frankenstein’s monster, who now calls himself ‘Frank’, as he seeks out Annette Bening’s “mad scientist” Dr. Euphronious and insists she create him a companion.
When a local escort with ties to a notorious mobster is murdered, the pair dig up the body and resurrect her, setting Frank on, as Bale puts it, the “crazy, exciting, destined-to-be-shortlived rollercoaster ride of her life”. Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz round out the supporting cast.
It releases on March 6. In the meantime, check out our picks of the best horror movies or our guide to the most exciting upcoming movies still to come.