Maggie Gyllenhaal builds her own kind of monster with the ultra-alive 'The Bride!'

It starts with the exclamation point, right there in the title.“The Bride!” is a wild, willfully over-the-top double-barreled reinvigoration of 1935’s “Bride of Frankenstein” that is always doing something a little extra in telling its unpredictable story of identity and the reclamation of the self.“I probably can’t definitively explain it,” says writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal about that punctuation.

“I think I first just put it there and wondered when someone was going to tell me to take it away.And nobody ever did.”Set in a dreamscape 1930s — imagine a steampunk-meets-art-deco version of “Bonnie and Clyde” — the film features a title performance by Jessie Buckley in three roles, sometimes in conversation with each other.

First, there’s Ida, a Chicago party girl who is killed when she becomes an inconvenience to powerful men.Then there’s “Frankenstein” author Mary Shelley, taking possession of another person’s body and voice.

Finally, there’s the Bride herself, the rebellious, reanimated corpse of Ida brought back to life as a companion to a creature here known as Frank (Christian Bale).The duo sets off on a lovers-on-the-run-style crime spree that captures national attention.

Movies We asked the film staff to name the titles they were most stoked for in 2026.They were happy to see the returning likes of Nolan, Spielberg, Gerwig and Wile E.

Coyote.On a February Los Angeles morning, Gyllenhaal moves briskly across the lobby of a low-key-chic hotel, barely breaking stride to ask that, instead of a discreet celeb-friendly indoor corner table, perhaps our interview could take place on an outdoor patio.

She would like to take in a bit more California sunshine before returning home to wintry Brooklyn.Dressed in a baggy suit that is both sharp and casual, Gyllenhaal doesn’t come across as particularly fussy but, rather, as someone certain of what she wants, even if what she wants is to explore the messiness of uncertainty...