Ronnie Reed

Think Bonnie and Clyde by way of natural-born killers, but gothic.

Frank, for his part, is weirdly obsessed with a Hollywood song and dance man named Ronnie Reed, played by Jake Gyllenhaal.

And yes, there is a full-blown musical number in this movie.

It's a lot.

On top of the score, Gyllenhaal brought in Fever Ray, Karen Dredgner's solo project, formerly of The Knife, to perform the underground nightclub scene, specifically for the bride's first night of freedom after reanimation.

Fever Ray contributed four songs, including The Lake and Wrong Flower, and their whole body of work is about identity, sexuality, belonging, a very deliberately aligned choice thematically.

Jake Gyllenhaal performed several songs, leaning into his Fred Astaire-coded Ronnie Reed character.

Jesse Buckley covers Falling in Love Again, and I love this, the whole film ends on monster mash over the credits, which is either the funniest needle drop of the year or the most tonally chaotic possibly both.

Yeah.

And then also, uh, her brother, Jake, um, Gyllenhaal played, um, the Hollywood star Ronnie Reed-

Yeah

...

People don't touch me.

People don't see me as-

Exactly, and so, and, and you've seen him, I think, up to this point, like, he was enjoying these Ronnie Reed films.

Mm-hmm.

yeah i pre-pro

we needed to audition dancers um and i knew that this language would be a combination of because of like this is spoiler time though am i allowed to say this say it we'll okay yeah all right because of frank's obsession with ronnie reed

yeah

The language of tap dance is a part of this world, right? But that tap dance is a 1930s movie musical like silver screen image of tap dance.

This is where this scene was filmed.

This is where this was filmed.

And they were following them around, rooted in Ronnie Reed films.

Yeah.

Uh, so they become known as the Monster Killers.

Things escalate when Ida and Frank hold up a fancy party, which includes Frank's idol, Ronnie Reed, and Jake Wiles, a kind of pathetic detective that Ida seems to remember.

As we get to know Jake and his much more confident secretary, Myrna Malloy, we learn that Ida was once an informant for Jake as he investigated Lupino.

But the case got dropped because of corruption, and Jake slept with Ida.

Um.

True.

Ronnie Reed and fancy men at the party, and then Lupino.

And I have to think that Ida and Lupino is a nod to Ida Lupino.