Dead Bride Review

Award-winning, dark and enthralling nerve-jangler from Italian writer-director Francesco Picone (Age of the Dead) is set to arrive on UK digital on 20 March 2023, courtesy of Trinity Creative.

Following the death of her estranged father, Alyson (Jennifer Mischiati – Creators: The Past) inherits her childhood home – despite her father giving her up for adoption when she was a young child, after her mother was declared insane. Putting the past behind them and hoping for a new start and a fresh change of scenery, Alyson and her husband, Richard (Christoph Hülsen – Stolen Days), decide to relocate to the mansion with their young baby.

When Richard goes away on a work trip, things take a distinctly dark turn and as Alyson begins exploring the gloomy old mansion, she soon uncovers some chilling and disturbing secrets…

As she comes face-to-face with her family’s shadowy and shameful history, it becomes apparent that there’s more than just the past haunting her… As trauma resurfaces with a vengeance, it threatens to harm Alyson’s family unit. Can she save them all before it’s too late?

Trailer at end of review

O.K. to start let’s just say this film is a little bit of a thematic mess, if you’ve been on social media and seen the posts that say “I got AI to read 10000 horror film scripts and…” This might be the outcome.

Francesco Picone has put some lovely scenes in this film, it’s shot beautifully and the lighting is lovely, it starts off nicely the pre credit scene is full of tension to the point that you may need clean undies when the words DEAD BRIDE fill the screen. The score is lovely and overall the film isn’t reliant on dramatic sound for the scares.

Unfortunately for me the whole thing just felt a little bit confused like it was trying to be everything, everywhere all at once and I don’t mean the Oscar winning film. It’s a dash of Insidious here, some Exorcist there with a sprinkling of The Omen on top of a nice Ju-On pie. It has time jumps that makes no real sense and this sense of confusion is in no way helped by the terrible audio dialogue which is similar to that of an overdubbed European Dr Oetker advert, reminds me of a radio play or audiobook, especially the husband.

There’s every, now overused, horror movie camera angle used in this along with most of the sure fire haunted house tropes. Straight down drone shots, plugholes blocked with hair, black water, kids toys of the creepy variety and for some unknown reason, the use of a Dickensian Wee Willie Winkie style lamp. There’s even moments of found footage and Paranormal activity style cameras.

The script is odd in parts Alyson asking what does this mean twice and then the husband asking do you know what this means for instance.

However, don’t let this all put you off too much…

If you get past the weird dialogue, and the fact that it’s not really bringing anything new to the table there’s some really nice scenes within.

The stuff involving Father Exposition, sorry Father Elbert is really nice and superbly shot. The exorcism scene is pretty decent, tense and relatively scary as so are the scenes in his car although these are slightly overplayed and the eventual fright you’re waiting for doesn’t deliver.

Dave the psychic is a character I feel should have been played for more comedic relief, Douglas Dean seems to really enjoy his part here, even when talking about “Sacred Herbs” and describing his balls.

Overall Dead Bride is a decent enough, fairly enjoyable horror with some beautifully shot scenes and a lovely score that’s let down by a stilted script, odd audio and too many ideas being thrown at it.

You’ll enjoy it, without really understanding what the hell it was about.

Here’s the Trailer