Dead Bride is a haunted house/possession movie that feels like one from the first frame to the last. The atmosphere is so strong, buoyed by ominous music, well-timed jump-scares, a location that is legitimately unsettling and some disturbing imagery. It all combines to create a consistent mood of unease throughout every scene. In many instances, horror is about a feeling. Dead Bride certainly captures the feeling that only bad things will befall anyone who enters this house. This is a very well-made genre entry.
Unfortunately, the screenplay doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain. The plot is thin and uninvolving. There is not a lot of drama in the action, with moments of necessary exposition being skipped in favor of just throwing another scare at the audience. Horror movies that explain and explain their supernatural villain tend to diminish the terror by taking away a lot of the mystery from it. However, leaving big reveals relatively vague makes it equally difficult to generate suspense.
Additionally, the characters are so shallow that it becomes hard to care about what happens to them. They are clichés in terms of both personality and behavior, mostly existing to cry and make ill-advised decisions. There is no tension in their story because there are no stakes and there is no sense of them as real people. Their role is to be terrorized, but the horror would have to be far more interesting in order for that to work. That leaves the production, which is definitely effective, yet not engaging enough to make up for what Dead Bride is lacking.
Alyson returns to her childhood home with her husband, Richard, and their baby. It is immediately clear that they are not alone and something evil has plans for their son. The resulting plot deals with the house’s past, the secret of what happened to Alyson’s mother and her and Richard’s marriage troubles in a way that keeps things busy without adding anything of substance.
Alyson is pretty much exclusively the damsel in distress, only kind of taking action in the final act. Richard is the unsupportive husband who is unsympathetic toward whatever his wife’s problem is. Initially, it seems like his character arc is going to concern potential extramarital activities (to show that Alyson’s danger is coming from more than one direction), but that ended up going nowhere.
The backstory about the titular entity is detailed enough in that it keeps her malevolence largely unpredictable, while still giving viewers a decent idea as to why she is so angry. Yet the why of her situation remains unclear even by the conclusion, despite several flashbacks.
The focus in Dead Bride is on the style over the substance. The style is really enjoyable, though it is not enough to overcome how insubstantial the rest of this is. The creature design is suitably creepy, the space (especially the attic) feels full of possible menace and the use of darkness is very unnerving. Sadly, the plot and characters keep dragging it down. Everything about the design is good, making the remainder of the movie disappointing in comparison.
—Ben Pivoz