Last weekend, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s reimagining of the Bride of Frankenstein hit cinemas after a divided critical reception.

Some reviewers praised the wild audacity of The Bride! starring Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, while others (this one included) thought it was the worst film of the year so far.

To be honest, I couldn’t wait for this pretentious nonsense to end and by the sounds of it, members of the public couldn’t even manage that.

According to ScreenGeek: “The Bride! Is reportedly being met with mass audience walkouts during screenings.”

Take this post with a grain of salt, but there are comments that certainly make the claim plausible, as was the case I literally witnessed while watching Buckley’s Oscar-nominated Hamnet. On The Bride!, a filmmaker commented: “A year ago, back when it was originally ready for release, one of the key creatives on the Bride told me it was an unreleasable mess. While an Emmy-nominated TV host wrote, “I almost walked out several times. Weak story and poorly built character development.”

Meanwhile, a film fan shared on Reddit: “The first 30 minutes are genuinely bad. My wife wanted to walk out. I wouldn’t blame people for walking out or letting that shape how they see the rest of the film. But in the end, it was a very impressive film! Probably not for general audiences, though. Manifestations of suppressed feminine rage don’t usually. Plus, the fact that it’s very visually weird.” If that wasn’t bad enough, The Bride! is set to be one of the biggest box office bombs of the year with just $14 million taken on a $90 million budget after its opening weekend.