'The Bride!' blows up the usual 'Frankenstein' formula – Review

Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale are monstrously good in Maggie Gyllenhaal's Mary Shelley-sparked 'Frankenstein' romance 'The Bride!'

There have been so many remakes and revamps of the “Frankenstein” mythos – there’s even one up for a bunch of Oscars – that it’s pretty neat when a newcomer offers just a whiff of originality.

And in that vein, writer and director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s punk-rock twist on “The Bride of Frankenstein” takes a flaming torch to the mold.

With Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale as the film’s monsters, “The Bride!” (★★★ out of four; rated R; in theaters March 6) is a wild and untamed thing that reflects its patchwork creation. There are elements borrowed from B-movie horror flicks, crime dramas, Broadway musicals and love stories, mashed together in bold and bizarre strokes. And while imperfections exist in the violent, genre-defying romance, they don’t dim Gyllenhaal’s clear-eyed passion, grand ideas and big swings spattered on the screen.

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Gyllenhaal unleashes her coolest swerve right from the start: Mary Shelley (Buckley), author of the classic gothic novel and mother to all things "Frankenstein," is alive! (Kind of!) Seen in close-up from an ethereal hereafter, Mary opines about wanting to go forward with the story she didn’t get to tell with her 19th-century book. Like most creators with a hit, she wants a sequel.