Since the embargo for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! dropped earlier this week, I’ve seen film critics condemn the film as messy, defend the film as good, and complain about whether other writers are/aren’t offering good-faith reads of the film.
Which is the surest sign yet that The Bride! has the juice.
While any film will have its detractors or supporters, it’s been my experience than many titles fall along a kind of general spectrum of opinion. People will generally agree that a film is generally good, or generally bad, and it’s rare to see major fractures in the critical consensus. I sometimes review my own RottenTomatoes scores to see if I fall in the majority of most film opinions, and the answer is often yes.
(Of course, you should read individual reviews because of the specificity of writers’ observations, not the aggregate score of a film, but I think you already know that.)
But the movies I really live for at the ones where there is divisiveness. I love films like Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, which inspire deep hatred or admiration and very little in between. And those films are doubly fun because they let you feel like you’re approaching a movie on your own terms, not anchored in the context of outside observations. Even knowing going in that a movie is considered good or bad anchors your viewing experience in a way a complete chaos muppet of a movie cannot.
So as I scroll through my feed and see some of my favorite film critics saying that The Bride! absolutely is/isn’t a bold/unfocused work of art, I only get more excited to see it myself. Maybe it will be an angry re-imagining of feminist literature. Maybe it will be a hollow exercise in style over substance. Maybe it will be one for the next five years and another with a little bit of distance! MAYBE IT’LL BE BOTH!
But one thing’s for sure: we won’t know until we see it for ourselves. Good thing I have my tickets set for tonight.
New This Week
The Bride! Review: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Dull Attempt at Meta Monsters
You know what I love about good writing? Good writing also gives you daylight to form your own assumptions. Siddhant Adlakha is a fantastic writer, and like all fantastic writers, he has a knack for reviewing movies in a way that invites disagreement. His review of The Bride! might be a negative once — and he does a remarkable job of digging into the substance of the film to find its flaws — but reading between the lines, I can see a scenario where I like, maybe even love, Gyllenhaal’s film.
From the Archives
Revisiting Larry Fessenden’s No Telling
If we’re going to celebrate loose Frankenstein adaptations, let’s also include one by Larry Fessenden. No Telling is the horror auteur’s debut feature, and it also uses mad science as a vehicle for social commentary. This is a great piece by regular contributor Jamie Alvery and well-worth a read if you’re into the many wonderful features of Glass Eye Pix.
Around the Web
Quick hits from around the world of horror and indie journalism.
Keep your eyes on your podcast feeds for today’s episode on Whistle, the YA horror film now available on VOD. Whistle slipped through theaters without a lot of fanfare, but it’s a surprisingly effective piece of spectacle in the vein of early 2000s studio horror.
Phil Nobile Jr. also has a very good take on the way the response to The Bride! is creating a lot of, ah, noise among some fans. If you’re not a subscriber to The Terror Teletype, I strongly recommend you sign up.
Horror fans were surprised to learn that tonight’s episode of The Last Drive-In With Joe Bob Briggs is set to be the series finale. Joe Bob himself even took to social media to dispel a few rumors about his health (and other things).
Since Paul Giamatti is now poised to star in his own horror movie, here’s a video I hadn’t seen before where Giamatti talks about producing John Dies at the End. Do we need to cover that one one on the site? Hm.
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