Avoid Like the Plague – THE BRIDE!

Sewn together out of dead parts then shocked into random motions that simulate human life but obviously isn’t. The Bride, or rather THE BRIDE! Is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Hollywood nepo-baby feminist outrage porn gooning to itself.

The director claims she became a real director the day Donald Trump was first elected president, because that was the worst thing that ever happened in the history of women. It had to have been the work of patriarchy instead of the work of incompetent female politician who inspired Democrats across America the same way Mitt Romney did Republicans.

This film is the imagined fury of a spoiled rich woman who literally has nothing to be angry about. THE BRIDE! Is what happens when a second generation theater kid is given way too much money and told to do whatever with it. This film’s worst transgressions could have been forgiven if it had been a student film funded by kickstarter, but this bloated monstrosity has to be judged by the size of its $90 million budget. I am positive Batgirl was nowhere near this bad.

Seriously, what does Maggie Gyllenhaal have on David Zaslav?

When I reviewed James Gunn’s Creature Commandoes one of my many, many complaints was about DC’s The Bride, and that it was kind of a pity that in no version of the story, ever, has the Creature got the girl who was literally made for him.

I was surprised to find that no one had ever tried to make a version where that happens. In the book, Victor Frankenstein was so terrified by the possibility, he destroyed the bride while he was working on her. When I saw Del Toro’s Frankenstein, I was wondering what he could have done with a love story between the Bride and the Creature as a tale of gothic, apocalyptic, cosmic horror. The Bride separated from the Creature and declaring, “Mine and mine to me! I will tear Earth, shatter Heaven and ripoff the gates of Hell itself to bring him back to me!” A love that would end the world of men.

Talk about a Cursed Monkey Paw Wish.

I got what I wanted and I am living in horror at the abomination my casual desire brought into existence.

Although speaking of horror, this is not a horror film. The only terror it inspired was in Warner Brothers Marketing department when they first realized they somehow have to sell this thing to an unsuspecting public. The only thing these poor bastards could do was make the trailer as incoherent as possible to hide the movie’s plot.

Granted the movie did a pretty good job of hiding the plot all on its own.

The movie is not merely bad. It is confused about the story it thinks it is telling. Maggie Gyllenhaal seems to believe that Frankenstein is fundamentally a tale about male control over female bodies. That interpretation might sound plausible if you’ve never read the novel and only vaguely remember the Halloween mask.

The main character is the Ghost of Mary Shelley…

Darklings: This is going to be one of these reviews where you’re constantly saying, “I’m not joking, this happened” isn’t it?

The Dark Herald: I’ll try to restrain myself… It won’t be easy.

The Ghost of Mary Shelley can not rest because the patriarchy stopped her from telling the real story that she wanted to tell, which was naturally all about THE BRIDE!

This is the first problem, Gyllenhaal clearly didn’t read the damn book. A big part of this movie is about how THE BRIDE! Was resurrected without her permission. Did Maggie get permission from Mary Shelley before resurrecting her? If so, how?

Mary Shelley goes to a Chicago, sort of in the 1930s, because nothing says gothic horror like the Jazz Age. She possesses the body of a hooker who is a police informant. She starts saying the kind of things to mobsters that would get a hooker killed and the hooker gets killed. That’s some good feministing Mary.

Frankenstein’s Creature… Yeah, I don’t know how you have both Mary Shelley and her monster in the same story, Maggie didn’t worry about that and I’m a misogynist for asking obvious, practical questions. “Frank” finally decides he wants a wife. So he goes to a brilliant woman scientist who has had her work suppressed because she’s a woman and not because she is actively pursuing the insanity of Victor Frankenstein’s research. She had to publish under a man’s name just like Marie Curie, Emmy Noether, Hertha Ayrton, Florence Bascom and dozens of other women scientists were never had to do.

So they dig up the hooker and bring her to life. She has no memory of her past life. The amazing thing here is that THE BRIDE feels that it was wrong to bring her back to life without her permission, but that Mary Shelley’s Ghost possessing her and getting her killed in the first place is A-Okay. Forgive me for stating the incredibly obvious but no human being, living or dead, has ever given their consent to be born.

Frank tries to seduce his new amnesiac wife but she still has the Ghost of Mary Shelley onboard, so she goes to a rave, and I’m not joking, this happened…

Darklings: Everybody take a shot!

It’s an actual rave, with modern “music” strobe lighting and everything. I’m sure Maggie thought being incoherent was clever. It wasn’t. Some of the MALE patrons drag off the Bride with the intent of raping her and they get pancaked by Frankenstein. Someone was present with a camera and took a picture of them. Which goes viral. They take off across country, pretending to be Bonnie and Clyde meets Syd and Nancy.

At this point the movie stops pretending to be a story and becomes a political hallucination. Her escapades inspire women to paint themselves like THE BRIDE! and rise up in rebellion across the country because Maggie Gyllenhaal honestly thought she could rip-off Joker and think no one would notice.

There is a brilliant woman detective with an Irish name and a Spanish accent who is tracking them. She has to pretend she’s an assistant to a man because in 1930s America a woman couldn’t become a real police detective like Isabella Goodwin did in 1912. She is partnered with a man who knows enough to get out of her way when she needs to be the brains of the outfit. He eventually promotes her to detective by handing her his badge, because police detective badges are like Green Lantern’s ring, they find their way to the most worthy and their awesome power is bestowed automatically.

Skipping ahead quite a bit because what I was watching was so awful my brain shutdown in self defense and refused to record what my eyes were gazing at in disgust.

Frank gets shot in the brain and like any zombie that does the trick. THE BRIDE! takes his corpse (his corpses? Is the plural correct here? I mean he is the orginal non-binary person) to the doctor. However, even the power of her womanhood is insufficient to bring Frank back to life. Then the police show up and kill the Bride for her many, many murders. The woman detective shows up and orders all the men to go away through the power of her Green Lantern badge. Mary Shelley’s Ghost possesses the Doctor and she now has the power to bring the author’s fictional creation back to life.

The end.

This movie inspired mass walkouts and hilariously positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. The reviews are all along the lines of ‘yeah, this is bad but I have to say it’s good because I’m a bad feminist if I don’t.’ 57% positive reviews are way too high, granted a lot of them are cut’n paste copies of each other with a few words being shuffled around here and there. I keep seeing the words “big swing” over and over again. The mental image that is supposed to conjure is one of Babe Ruth’s many strikeouts but what really comes to mind is a four-year-old playing Tee-ball who misses the ball and hits himself in the back of his helmet with his own bat.

Maggie Gyllenhaal became a rabid feminist when she stopped being given “hot girl” roles and started being cast as “the Mom.” Maggie was clearly inspired by Joker, wanted to make a feminist version of that with a different IP wrapper and managed to recreate Joker II.

The truly sad irony here is that Frankenstein was always a very feminine story. It was a deeply personal book. Mary Shelley wrote it after the death of her first child. The novel is saturated with grief, guilt, and the terror of creating life in a world where death is inevitable. It is not a feminist revenge fantasy. It is a tragedy about responsibility for bringing life into the world.

Frankenstein was written by a woman who was in agony over her lost child.

THE BRIDE! was written by a woman who is in agony over her lost youth.

Avoid Like the Plague (0/0)