The Bride! (2026)
I hated The Bride!. I’m obsessed with The Bride!. I considered walking out of The Bride!. I want to go see The Bride! in theaters again. The Bride! is feminist. The Bride! is misogynist. The Bride! is a singular artistic vision. The Bride! is a sloppy mess. I have no idea what was happening in The Bride!. All I want to do is to talk about what was happening in The Bride!. Fucking The Bride!, man.
The opening scene of The Bride! was one of the more surreal, confusing theater going experiences of my life (this could just be a sign I need to see more weird movies). No, I’m not going to describe the scene to you – I want you to go see it for yourself and experience it in all its off-putting glory! I could feel the audience react with bated breath together: as if we were all thinking in unison “what did we get ourselves into?.” But that’s the joy of The Bride!. You don’t know what you’re getting into, and it’s more fun if you witness it with others.
The Bride! has a meandering plot, often both over and under explained, with about five different genres (mobster movie, gothic horror, musical, to name a few) mashed together like Frankenstein’s monster himself. The Bride! has many attempted thoughts about feminism – mostly underbaked – but they’re there! And in the end I would always rather be watching something with too many thoughts, executed poorly, than something with no thoughts at all rendered with sleek perfection. Because the latter is not a film, it is an advertisement with a long runtime (can you tell I recently watched F1?).
Yes, The Bride! is technically based on a movie which is a sequel to a movie based on a book. Arguably it’s as reboot and IP-driven as you can get, directed by someone born into a filmmaker family with decades of experience in the industry. Still it feels wholly original. Unmarried to story conventions or reliable plot devices or any sort of studio notes trying to make it more palatable to audiences. I’m not saying The Bride! is good, but The Bride! is certainly refreshing. What a strange delight it is to bite into a weird funky cheese of unknown origin when you’ve previously been subsisting on Kraft singles.
The only shame of The Bride! is that it takes the clout of Maggie Gyllenhaal and one of the most iconic monster stories of all time to get made. Every movie should be allowed to swing and miss as hard as The Bride!. The lesson here is we need more The Bride!s, not less.
Each month I highlight an organization that’s important to me. I encourage people to check out the cool work they do, and also to find causes within their community to support as well.
Today I’m highlighting the National Network of Abortion Funds.
