“The Bride!” is a movie that made industry headlines for all the wrong reasons. Writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ambitious but clunky gothic horror romance had a star-studded cast and was given a near $100 million dollar production budget. But the movie failed to connect with mainstream audiences. And its disastrous theatrical run led to a projected loss of approximately $90 million.

After a quick movie post-mortem, it’s pretty easy to spot the issues that contributed to its poor performance. The film’s inflated budget certainly didn’t help, especially considering its stylishly gonzo concept. Its trek towards profitability was made even tougher by the confusing marketing which tried but failed to sell the movie to either blockbuster audiences or the arthouse crowd. And then there was the poor word-of-mouth, which kept the movie from gaining any box office traction.

But how is the actual movie? Well, it’s complicated. “The Bride!” is a bold yet messy attempt at reimagining both Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel “Frankenstein” and the 1935 film “Bride of Frankenstein”. On one hand, there is an undeniable allure to this unruly, hyper stylized, maximalist mashup. Gyllenhaal delivers a fearlessly rebellious and slickly anachronistic gender-bender that ambitiously smashes together gothic horror, classic noir, pitch-black comedy, and 1930s gangster action. It’s a wildly entertaining blend.

On the other hand, “The Bride!” often plays like an out-of-control feminist fever dream, especially in its second half, where nearly everything takes a back seat to Gyllenhaal’s in-your-face messaging. She force-feeds her audience to the point that subversion turns superficial. And too many of the attempts at making a statement come off as performative rather than genuine to the story being told. It’s a reoccurring and self-inflicted problem that gets more frustrating over time.

Recent Academy Award winner Jessie Buckley stars in a dual role, first as author Mary Shelley who is speaking from somewhere in the afterlife. The framing device features Shelly venting her frustrations at not being allowed to tell the “Frankenstein” story she longed to tell. To finally do so, Shelley possesses Ida (also Buckley) a disenchanted escort in 1936 Chicago. Ida’s loose lips angers a local mob boss named Lupino (Zlatko Burić). And during a confrontation with Lupino’s goons, a ranting Ida ends up falling to her death.

Enter Frankenstein’s monster, aka Frank (Christian Bale), whose often-told story is one Gyllenhaal understandably expects her audience to already know. He travels from Bavaria to Chicago in search of Dr. Cornelia Euphronius, an infamous scientist whose work in reanimation caught Frank’s attention. We learn that in the years since he was created, Frank has been overwhelmed by loneliness. Desperate for a conjugal relationship, Frank hopes to convince Dr. Euphronius to create him a bride.

It takes some convincing, but Euphronius finally agrees. She and Frank dig up the fresh corpse of Ida from a potter’s field and take her back to the doctor’s lab. Euphronius is able to revive Ida who awakens with no memory of who she is or where she came from. Frank makes up a story that she’s his bride and that her memory will return over time. The new couple ignore the doctor’s warning and head out for a night on the town, catching a movie before going dancing at a raucous nightclub.

But for Frank and Ida, things go south quick. While leaving the club, Ida is attacked by two goons who Frank promptly and brutally kills. Having faced angry mobs in his sad and painful past, Frank encourages Ida to leave him and spare herself from the inevitable trouble that’s coming. But with nowhere else to go, Ida insists on staying with Frank. So the two go on the run, hopping a train bound for New York. But they quickly learn that their problems follow them to the Big Apple.

From there “The Bride!” unfolds like a monster version of “Bonnie and Clyde”. Frank and Ida’s growing notoriety not only draws the attention of the police, but also Lupino who sends out a hitman to silence Ida for good. Meanwhile an undercooked side story(ish) follows a haggard private detective named Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) who wants to find Ida before the cops do. He works alongside his plucky secretary, Myrna Malloy (Penélope Cruz), who (in keeping with the film’s unsubtle feminist core) is the brains behind their partnership.

Buckley and Bale are great together and they maneuver through the various genres with a playful energy and emotional intensity. Buckley follows up her Best Actress turn in “Hamnet” with a raw and boisterous spin on The Bride, sporting a platinum blonde bouffant, pale skin, and a black crystalloid smudge across her face. Meanwhile Bale slyly finds a balance between monstrosity and humanity. In one scene he unleashes violence like a feral beast. A short time later he’s sitting in a movie house with a tear in his eye, quoting lines along with his favorite actor.

With “The Bride!”, Gyllenhaal throws a lot at us. Her film rotates between being a gruesome monster movie, a quasi-musical, a dark romance, and a gritty gangster flick. It doesn’t always gel together as intended, but it’s hard not to appreciate the daring swings and gonzo style. The real problems come with the bludgeoning attempts at social commentary. Whether it’s the inherent preachiness or the awkward sloganizing, the film’s lack of finesse and nuance undermines so much of what the movie does well.

VERDICT – 2.5 STARS