New Delhi, March 5 -- Maggie Gyllenhaal's "The Bride!" is a big, brash swing at a new "The Bride of Frankenstein" that struggles to cohere its many parts. But I'll say this for it: It's alive.

Just months after Guillermo del Toro presented his lavish "Frankenstein," Gyllenhaal, in her follow-up to her excellent 2021 directorial debut, "The Lost Daughter," has set her sights on reimagining 1935's "The Bride of Frankenstein." The sequel starred Boris Karloff and, in the dual role of the Bride and Mary Shelley, Elsa Lanchester.

But in "The Bride of Frankenstein," the shock-haired Bride is only on screen for a handful of minutes at the end of the film. Gyllenhaal, who also wrote her film, has corrected the imbalance, refashioning the story ...