The Bride

The official trailer for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s film The Bride, set in 1930s Chicago, opens with the death of the title character (played by Jessie Buckley). At 0:06 we see the title character fall to her death in slow motion. Heartbeats begins to be heard, faint and slow at first. A frantic voiceover from the bride exclaims that she did not want any of this, and at 0:14 the heartbeat is now twice as frequent. At 0:18 we add the sound of a ticking clock (a motif commonly found in suspenseful trailers dating back at least as far as the 2017 _Dunkirk _trailer).

At 0:22 as we see an overhead shot of the title character’s dead body, the heartbeat is now twice as fast as before (here they’re using a buildup technique common in electronic dance music). To enhance this rhythmic buildup visually, from 0:22-0:29 the camera shots change in time with the music, and most of the visuals slowly zoom in on two different shots of the title character’s dead body, creating claustrophobic tension.

At 0:32 the bride is successfully brought back to life, and after she inhales her first breath, we begin the intro of “Everybody Scream,” the title track of Florence + The Machine’s 2025 album (the song’s music video is a short film in its own right). Over the song’s distorted bass guitar intro, we hear dialogue between Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale) and the bride as if they’re meeting for the first time.

Florence sings “Get on stage, and I call her by her first name” at 0:48, which is ironic since the two main characters here, monster and bride, were famously never given names by Mary Shelley in the original Frankenstein story!

At 1:03 we hear a steady stream of trailer triplets in the music as we see the monster standing up and screaming in a convertible driven by the bride. This brings us to a title card for director Gyllenhaal at 1:05. From here the drums and synthesizers begin pulsing in a groove that feels almost like a house music track. Fun fact - Gyllenhaal’s The Bride is set in Chicago, also the birthplace of house music. And just to seal the deal on this as dance music, at 1:24 Florence sings “Everybody dance!” as we cut to a scene of a ballroom with a dance led by the monster and the bride. The music cuts to silence at 1:37 and rightly so, as the bride has her gun pointed at the head of a helpless, kneeling, tuxedo’ed character (played by our director’s brother Jake Gyllenhaal!).

Now musically, after having gone into double-time so many times by this point in the trailer, perhaps there’s nowhere left to go but down, so at 1:42 when the music returns, it’s with synthesizers and string orchestra playing long sustained chords. And while the music progresses more slowly the visuals continue moving faster, as we see racing cars and running protagonists, with an emphasis on the romance between monster and bride. There’s a nice moment in this montage at 1:57 when we hear Florence singing “Screaming my name” as we see the bride on screen screaming ferociously but inaudibly into the blare of police headlights. The trailer closes out with a few cuts to silence to feature some memorable turnphrases from bride and monster.

Similar to the recent collaboration with Charli XCX for the music in the Wuthering Heights trailer, the collaboration here between The Bride and Florence + The Machine feels almost like this recently released song was custom written for this film. Fits like a glove, emotionally and lyrically on point and on theme.

The Bride smashes into theatres March 6th

— Jack Hui Litster