James Whale’s 1935 film The Bride of Frankenstein has long been revered as one of the best Frankenstein films ever made, even better than its predecessor. But, as Maggie Gyllenhaal points out in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, “The movie’s called The Bride of Frankenstein, but she’s not really in it. It’s just a Frankenstein sequel, and she literally doesn’t speak.” With her new film, The Bride!, Gyllenhaal sets out to give the woman the voice, autonomy, and spotlight she deserves. What ensues is a ferocious, bold swing from the filmmaker and a movie unlike any Frankenstein-adjacent film we’ve seen before.

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet has graced the silver screen in many forms for decades, whether it was Laurence Olivier’s 1948 classic or Michael Almereyda’s 2000 adaptation that moved the story to contemporary New York City. But never before has a film recontextualized and transformed the way audiences perceive the story of Hamlet quite like Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell’s award-winning novel Hamnet.