It seems unfair that The Bride!, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s original take on Mary Shelley’s novel, is released within spitting distance of Guillermo del Toro’s more faithful version, especially given that the latter has gotten more love. Though Frankenstein is not strictly speaking an IP franchise, its stranglehold on popular culture 200 years after it was written means that everyone and their Igor has an opinion about it. The Bride!, in fact, doesn’t riff on the novel the way del Toro did, but rather on James Whale’s movie and its sequel, both of which were made during the 1930s, when Gyllenhaal’s piss-take is set, and there’s a good reason for that. Though most critics have fixated on the movie’s eruptions of hyper-feminist bile, what it says about Hollywood’s commandeering of culture feels more relevant. Being set in the 30s, the movie not only takes full advantage of the original Bride of Frankenstein‘s quirky tone, but also the era’s gangster movies, glitzy musicals, and screwball comedies. The ultra-violence accommodates post-millennial sensibilities, but the offhanded way that violence is carried out hearkens back to the prime of Warner Brothers, the studio that also happened to back The Bride! (before it went on the chopping block). Even that presumptuous exclamation point in the title feels like a throwback—I’m sure Lorenz Hart would have something to say about it.

The so-called plot picks and chooses from 1930s themes without adding up to anything narratively cohesive. Mary Shelley (Jessie Buckley) gives us what-for right from the start, demanding she be given a second stab at her creation after all it’s been through. She soon reappears in Chicago as Ida, a moll whose salty mouth earns her a trip head-first down a flight of stairs courtesy of some underworld lunk. Cut to the anachronistic lair of Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening), a mad scientist whose reputation for reanimation has reached the bolted ears of Frank (Christian Bale), the Karloff manque whose namesake creator never got around to making him a mate (to find out why, you have to read the book, or see del Toro’s movie), and so he hopes the good doctor will. Subsequently, Ida is dug up and brought back to life with her messy mouth and brief memory of the afterlife intact, not to mention an even more incandescent hatred of male human beings, especially those dressed in pin-striped suits and policemen’s uniforms. Frank loves it, and her, and who wouldn’t? If the newlyweds’ misadventures too closely resemble those that played out in Bonnie and Clyde the movie, just remember in which decade Bonnie and Clyde the lovers lived and died. 

As entertaining and surprising as much of The Bride! is, it doesn’t make as lasting an impression as it should, owing mainly to the way the outrage outstrips the meaning and blurs the exposition. Frank’s penchant for “Putting on the Ritz”-style effusions, expressed through his fanboy attraction to silver screen hoofer Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal) while being closer in tone to Mel Brooks’ version of the franchise, is more memorable, as is the carefully delivered risque banter between the two detectives (Peter Sarsgaard, Penelope Cruz) investigating the couple’s killing spree (“I’m your gal Friday”). Ida herself is such a voluble hellion that you can’t keep up with half of what she’s saying or thinking, and I suppose that’s the point. You can’t keep a good—or bad—woman down.

A more recent version of Hollywood is sent up in the dumb comedy Anaconda, which purports to be a sequel to the popular 1990s creature feature of the same title, but, like The Bride!, is more like a practical joke played on a beloved classic, the difference being that the new Anaconda has nothing interesting to say about anything, whether it’s Hollywood or big snakes. 

Jack Black and Paul Rudd play BFFs whose adolescent dream was to make it big in the movie business, and as they enter middle age they find themselves severely short of the dream, with Doug (Black) sublimating his directing jones into wedding videos and Griff (Rudd) barely scraping by as a fourth-tier actor. In a last ditch effort to be recognized, they embark on an ambitious project to remake Anaconda, their favorite movie, using their own money and a crew anchored by the two friends (Steve Zahn, Thandiwe Newton) who used to share their adolescent otaku film spirit.

The movie’s faux-DIY energy bolsters the comedy during the first half of the movie as the group struggles to raise money and put together a production that isn’t total shit, but once the action moves to the Amazon and has to get jiggy with wild animals and a bunch of murderous gold prospectors, the movie loses its focus and jolts around on hit-or-miss sight gags. A few stars from the original movie show up to little effect, and what should be the film’s best meta-joke—they discover to their shock that Sony Pictures is already in Brazil making a genuine sequel to Anaconda—is flimsily developed. The whole thing comes across as half-assed: Black’s and Rudd’s comedic charms get shoved aside by the purposely cruddy horror SFX, and the target of their satire—the studio that actually bankrolled this movie—gets the last laugh, literally. 

The Bride! opens April 3 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), 109 Cinemas Premium Shinjuku (0570-060-109), Shinjuku Wald 9 (03-5369-4955), Shinjuku Piccadilly (050-6861-3011), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Shibuya (050-6868-5002), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

Anaconda opens April 3 in Tokyo at Toho Cinemas Nihonbashi (050-6868-5060), Toho Cinemas Hibiya (050-6868-5068), Toho Cinemas Shinjuku (050-6868-5063), Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills (050-6868-5024).

The Bride! home page in Japanese

Anaconda home page in Japanese

The Bride! photo (c) 2026 Warner Bros. Ent.

Anaconda photo (c) 2026 CMTG