(https://i.imgur.com/7fpvaeP.png)
Studio: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
Release Date: 5/19/2026
Rating: R
Film Grade: D
The Story: The spirit of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley has not been at rest since her death in 1851. To that end, she possesses the body of a young woman named Ida. Her purpose? To finish the story, she started with Frankenstein by giving the creature a companion. A companion that is just as real as the creature itself.
My Take: Despite the negative word of mouth, curiosity got the best of me, and I couldn’t resist grabbing this one when it showed up at the library. It’s hard to make sense of this movie. Like the fictional monster, it’s stitched together from disparate parts. Early Hollywood musicals, Bonny and Clyde, gangster stories, detective movies, and even horror are all smashed together in this malformed and misbegotten tale of love, misery, death, and chaos.
Narratively, it looks at the monsters as real creatures. So, Shelly’s story isn’t fiction, there was a real Victor Frankenstein and a real creature, who’s called Frank in this film, which is set in 1936. How did Shelly learn about Frankenstein and his creature? Unknown. What leads to, and allows her to possess, the body of gangster moll Ida? Unknown. How has Frank survived, undiscovered, for more than a century after his creation? Unexplained. As the story unfolds, the perspective changes awkwardly. It clearly starts from Shelly’s perspective, but soon we’re pulled into Frank’s mind as he envisions himself as inhabiting the movies he loves attending. This creates a dichotomy that never pulls together in a cohesive way. Add to that numerus anachronistic references, and there’s more to pull the audience out of the story than place them in it.
Themes of chaos, disorder, and disruption carry throughout the story, combined with some kind of clunky female empowerment angle. And while there’s an element of romance, it’s pushed to the rear. Instead, it seeks to inspire some kind of social revolution under the rallying cry of “brain attack!”
Maggie Gyllenhaal has gathered an amazing cast for the film but the performances didn’t work for me. Oscar-winning Jessie Buckley (Hamnet) delivers Shelly’s dialog as if she’s channeling Katherine Hepburn, often interrupting Ida’s lines with a rambling stream of consciousness, free association, word salad that resembles an old Robin Williams routine. Christian Bale fares no better, delivering Frank’s lines by way of a grumbling Monty Python Gumby, albeit with more thought behind them. It makes their time on screen a chore to sit through. Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz form a detective duo, with Cruz’s Myrna being the brains of the two, held back by the patriarchy. Annette Bening offers some dignity to the role of Dr. Euphronious, spiritual successor to Dr. Frankenstein, but she doesn’t get much screen time.
There’s one aspect of the movie that does work well, and that’s the design of Frank’s makeup. Partially reminiscent of the Universal Pictures version it also has traces of Christopher Lee’s makeup in Hammer’s Curse of Frankenstein and it looks great.
Visuals: While some theatrical versions of the film shifted between three different aspect ratios, the Blu-ray comes with constant 2.39:1 framing. The digital picture is clear and crisp with good coloration.
Audio: The disc sports an Atmos mix, it feels standard. Dialog is mostly clear other than some of Buckley and Bale’s dialog, which sounds muddled at times, but that’s performance related, not due to the recording.
Special Features:
- Stitching Together the Bride! (8:15)
- Designing the Look (8:44)
- The Muse and the Reimagined Monster (8:02)
- The Bride! Party (6:15)
Final Verdict: Watching the extras, one really gets the feeling that those involved were fully committed to the project, but that passion doesn’t come across on screen. What we get is a disjointed movie that doesn’t know what it’s meant to be. Blending so many genres with a hackneyed plot leaves the audience without little to engage with. At times it feels like it wants to be taken seriously, but at other times it descends into the ridiculous. There’s one scene in particular that references an older version of the story that had me disbelieving that they actually went there with it. To that end, it could have been turned into a comedy, but there’s a distinct lack of humor, not even black humor, to counter the ugliness of the characters and story.
In the end, I don’t have a clear understanding of who this movie was for or who might enjoy it. Do audiences really want to contemplate whether or not two reanimated copulating corpses should be considered necrophilia? Regardless, would anyone want to watch it? There’s a segment of society that’s currently enjoying an “eat the rich and elite” philosophy who might find joy in the themes of wanton anarchy and destruction. Or there might be people looking for a movie to laugh at, rather than with, who will find loads of fodder here. But I can’t recommend this to anyone at any level, least of all horror fans.
Ridiculous Dialog: “I’m looking for. . . an intercourse.”
https://youtu.be/IhgcUArO3Uo
This review was written by a human without the use of AI.
My Review System:
JVC DLA-RS3100 4K Ultra High-Definition Front Projector
Elite Screens Sable Frame B2 117” Width with Infinitely Variable Height
Monolith by Monoprice HTP-1 16 Channel Processor with Dirac Live
Monolith by Monoprice 7x200 Watts Amp
Monolith by Monoprice 3x200 Watts + 6x100 Watts Amp
JBL Studio 590 for Left, Center, Right, Wides, and Rears
JBL Studio 580 for Side Surrounds
JBL Studio SCS 8 for Tops
JTR Captivator 1400 Subwoofer X 4
Panasonic DP-UB420 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player
Oppo BDP-93
NVIDIA Shield Android TV - 4K
Xbox One X
HTPC Running madVR (work in progress)
Remote: URC MX-780
Mini DSP 2X4 HD controlling all subwoofers
APC S15 Power Conditioner with Battery Backup