I wanted to see this from the first time I saw the trailers. It looked like an interesting, modern take on the Bride of Frankenstein with a Bonnie and Clyde vibe. Those weren't something I would have mixed personally but then again I'm not a screenwriter.
Frankenstein's monster has a name in this movie - Frankenstein. Let's leave all the debate about that situation aside because it really doesn't matter. He's assumed the name here so that's who he is. In a tiny way it's him claiming part of himself because his creator didn't bother to name him. The fact that he takes on the name of his abuser (that's what Dr. Frankenstein really was) actually does a bit to set up the character, but more on that later.
He shows up in Chicago to visit a scientist he's been writing and who hasn't been writing back. This scientist writes about "reinvigorating", the term used instead of reanimating. It seems like it's a way to modernize the situation but keep the word in mind. Frank is there to get himself a companion.
The doctor is not what he expects - it's a woman. There's the classic back-and-forth where Frank talks to her about how he's been writing the doctor and he hasn't written back. The doctor reveals herself to him and takes the time to talk to him. She's not thrilled with his idea of reinvigorating a woman for himself and wants him there to study for her own reasons.
But I've skipped the beginning! This is where things take a supernatural twist. The spirit of Mary Shelley is still hanging around and is upset about all the stories she didn't get to write. Not just the ones she meant to write but the ones she couldn't write because of the times in which she lived. This is where the feminist motif starts and it doesn't leave the movie. Mary is looking for a way to tell her story of the bride for her monster, and needs someone in the real world to use for that.
OK. I'm back on track now.
Ima is a party girl who hangs out with the local Chicago mafia. She's doing just that when Mary starts intruding into her head and suddenly Ima is rattling off large synonyms and talking out of turn about the mob boss, who's at the next table. Two of the goons at her table take her away as she makes a scene. As rather expected, she dies what could be termed a natural death if you think of "gravity is natural" because she's pushed down a flight of stairs.
The fall down the stairs is done in multiple shots. She breaks her ankle but even with multiple bongs to the coconut she doesn't seem to break her neck. The last shot of her in this incarnation is splayed at the bottom of the stairs.
Frank persuades the doctor to do what he wants. Mostly it seems she just wants an excuse to do it. She seems to feel that Frank is substandard work and wonders why his creator stitched him together from spare parts rather than use one body. Frank suggests it was a bunch of research in one go. This doctor decides that one body is enough, thank you very much.
The obligatory "dig up the body" scene has them getting Ima out of the ground. She's not in a coffin and still wearing the clothing she had on when she died. This is a blip in the matrix because we don't know how long she was down there and she's suspiciously fresh, unless the doctor somehow had an in with whoever runs the pauper's graves. We'll leave that alone.
When they get her back to the lab (third floor of a very nice corner house) Frank gets upset saying "she's too beautiful". I have no idea why this would be a problem unless he felt she couldn't handle his appearance? The doctor, bless her heart, gets snippy asking what she's supposed to do with a fresh corpse and if he expects her to find another woman for him. That ends the argument.
Her method uses black fluid. It's injected through the veins and bumped with electricity. At least that's what it seems happens. Ima is hooked up to IVs, several tubes into her chest, and some kind of metal scale chest piece. The doctor doesn't wait for lightning - she's hooked into the municipal power system to draw what she needs. Modern measures!
Anyway. Glug glug zap. And we get a reinvigorated Ima. To be more accurate, we get a reinvigorated woman with a broken ankle who doesn't know who she is. Mary Shelley is still hanging around tho so there's that. The doctor is pleased, Frank is pleased, Ima is confused. The doctor fits a very large iron cage around her broken ankle that she doesn't seem to feel. I'm guessing the reinvigoration process doesn't include healing stuff.
One thing of note is Ima's hair. When she's alive it's in a conventional hairstyle. After she's thumped down the stairs it's fanned out. When she's reinvigorated it's big. Seems like her hair shows her breaking the rules of society. At least I'll say that. I'll also continue to call her Ima until later.
Ima immediately shows that she's her own person with her own mind. The doctor wants them both to hang around to be studied. Frank is completely hot to have his bride. Ima wants to do whatever the hell she wants. Frank seems infatuated by her independence.
Frank takes her out on the town. They find an underground club of some kind. Ima starts having a lot of fun, leading on a couple of guys to think that it means they can have their fun with her. She objects, Frank objects strenuously, a photographer is around and gets their picture, the cops show up to deal with the aftermath of Fran's strenuous objection. The cops are the ones that continue through the movie - a detective and his female partner, who's not a detective but seems to do all the detective work he's getting credit for.
Note that any of the black on Ima doesn't wash off, or they don't try but let's go with the fact it's permanent stains. At the club in the bathroom someone mentions her tat and she doesn't correct them. They seem less impressed when she shows her black tongue. Note that the amount of black on her tongue varies through the movie but I won't bother about that since it's a hard thing to do with makeup to give her a black tongue and white teeth.
Frank is obsessed with a musical movie star. This is where the movie goes a little off the rails because he sees himself in the movies and so do we. It's a recurring theme and starts to include Ima as the movie progresses. If I were an artsy movie person I'd say it was because he wanted to escape his life by escaping into the magic world of the movies but that's so overdone I'll let you take or keep that as you like.
Let's get back to this.
The two of them head across country after the newspaper prints their picture and the police are looking for them. For reasons unknown they choose New York as their destination. Travel is a combination of stealing cars and riding in train cars. Early during the trip they're on a train car, Frank is very familiar with how to get away with this, Ima screws that up and ends up getting a police officer killed when he falls/is pushed out of the moving car. That brings the detectives back into the mix.
While in New York Frank shows her how to get money by taking it from various fountains. They're holed up in what seems to be an abandoned hotel and they're in the empty swimming pool. It's not a bad place since it's not like anyone looking in the windows will see them. Ima tries getting "friendly" with him, he declines. She gets a bit miffed about that but rolls with the situation.
For whatever reason women are starting to take up the makeup and freedom they perceive in Ima across the country. They're painting on the black mark on their face, picking up weapons, and making it clear that they're not putting up with stuff anymore. As I said I'm not exactly sure how this got to be a movement but it is.
They are going to the movies as they travel, always starring the same actor Frank adores. The female detective figures this out and they she looks up the places that are showing his movies. There's one in New York so they decide to stake it out. It's a good call because Frank is dragging Ima to go to it, she's bored with seeing the same movies, and takes him to a 3D zombie movie. Note - my movie buddy had a big issue with this since he said that 3D movies weren't invented yet but a quick Wikipedia search shows that yes, it could have happened.
During the movie a couple in the seats in front of Ima is doing some groping, the woman keeps saying no, the man keeps groping. She tells him to leave her alone. The crowd looks, sees the two of them, recognizes them from the newspaper articles that have been continuing to be printed, and panic out of the theater. The movie is showing the two of them as zombie monster during this little scene. They run out with the crowd.
As they're trying to get back to their place they go through a hotel kitchen and into the ballroom. Ima is slick enough to grab a tray and pretend to be a server. Frank catches on, flips his coat around so the light lining shows, and grabs his own tray. Here's where things go wrong and weird. It just so happens that the actor he loves is in the crowd and he finds him. Ima is working her way out, as she should. Frank goes into scary overzealous fanboy and the whole thing ends up as some sort of weird dance sequence to - get this - "Putting on the Ritz". It's a bad dance sequence, by the way.
The police arrive in force. Ima gets one of their guns. Confusion ensues. She ends up non-fatally shooting one of them who doesn't listen to instructions by his own commander. She rightly blames him. She also recognizes the male detective and shoots him for good measure. She does a monologue during all this and brings up the Chicago mobster by name.
This is where she starts to get really confused. She's three people now. She's Mary Shelley. She's Penelope, the name Frank has given her along with a completely made up history between them. She's Ima who's starting to rise back out of her memories. Turns out the detective she shot was one who was on the mafia boss's payroll and also using women like her to get information. Many of those women had been discovered and disposed of by the mob boss, who kept their tongues. She doesn't like the detective.
Here's an interlude where the two of them get, ahem, intimate. Frank finally gets what he wants and it really isn't just the sex. He wanted intimacy and companionship. And sex. He's got them all in his reinvigorated amnesiac partner.
The mobster gets wind of what she said, chides the two men who killed her the first time, kills one of them who got a little too defensive, and sends the other one off to finish the job. This time he's supposed to bring back her tongue. Since the mob boss knows his family situation and that's never a good thing, off he goes.
This is where the Bonnie and Clyde aspect showed in the trailers because of them driving around, her having the revolver, the two of them being a couple. Sadly this is not the case. She figures out Frank has been spinning tales about the two of them to suit his own desires, right down to telling her what her name is. He gets that tattooed on his chest above the big scar that also goes across his chest. The break in the ballroom is letting Ima memories return so she's rightly peeved. She's going to ditch him in the middle of a field but a police car makes her decide that's not a good idea.
They don't go back to the abandoned hotel, which the detectives find. They head out again. The male detective had called back to his station and was giving up his badge, but only if he got to choose his replacement. Yes. He gives his badge to the female detective. Not exactly how that all works but hey, reality doesn't figure much into a movie like this. Now she's at least got a badge to show.
I'll try to wrap things up here.
While at a drive in movie Frank and Ima/Penelope get into a fight. She's got three women inside her noggin and she's working out who she is now. She doesn't want to be any of them so she decides she's going to be The Bride. Frank drawls out that she's the Bride of Frankenstein. She corrects him - she's just The Bride. He likes that even more. She comes around to saying she loves him, at which time he's promptly shot through the head by a local police officer or maybe the guy trying to kill her. I'm uncertain at this point and it doesn't really matter.
Car chase and she gets him back to Chicago to have the doctor reinvigorate him. The doctor takes them in but is only going to study him, not bring him back. She gets a nice speech about how her and her husband were playing around with the aspects of her/their work and went a little too far. That's when she found out about how when someone is brought back they don't have any memory of who they were. She had to "put him down" when that was clear. Um. Wow. Ok.
The Bride isn't having any of that. She's still got the gun and demands that Frank be brought back. The detective has followed them along with local police. The local police do what they do to monsters - lots of gunfire which does no damage to the equipment in the room, thank goodness. The female detective gets them to stop and gets them out of the room so the doctor and her maid (who's got the black mark on her face now) can get themselves in order. Gotta love using societal norms against someone.
The Bride is now lying on top of Frank's body on the operating table. The female detective tells the doctor to take all the time she needs, looking pointedly at the two bodies before leaving. As they're all on the street you see the bright light in that top room. Frank and The Bride's hands move and they end up holding hands.
Not quite done yet!
The same restaurant where the mob boss ordered Ima's second death is full of women with the black mark on their face and blunt force weapons. The glass jars of preserved human tongues (they were in the background of the other scene there as well) have been spilled open across his table. We close with them turning his face to show that they've tattooed a black mark on him.
Wow. A lot of movie. Too bad there's not a lot of content to go with it.
The dance scenes were horrible. Simply horrible. If it had just been dancing it would have fit in to a certain extent. But they were big choreographed numbers centering on Frank and Ima/Penelope. There was no point to them except to have big choreographed dance numbers.
The power dynamic between Frank and Mary/Ima/Penelope/The Bride was interesting in that she was the dominant partner. Being four people in one body may have helped but Frank was always portrayed as more of a follow along than a leader. That makes sense because he spent his life hiding and just getting by. She was someone who was making something of her life and she continued after death.
The gangs of women taking up the call were again not really clear. I know it's a display of women throwing off their shackles and using the visible black symbol on their faces to show it. It follows the feminist theme of the movie so we'll go with that. Having the women get back at the mob boss was simply a good way to tie that string off.
I don't recommend seeing this movie. I honestly don't. It's a mess. It has too many things it thinks it wants to do but it doesn't commit to any of them. I'd say that there's a lot that could have been done but really, no. The original concept of the bride was her realizing what was done to her and burning it all to the ground. Here they have her partnering up with the monster and letting her own monster out. Too bad it's not interesting to watch it happen. The character development goes wonky when they have to keep shoehorning in all the different people she was.
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