Directed by Zelda Williams, written by Diablo Cody, and starring Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse, Lisa Frankenstein has plenty of sparks.
Set in 1989, Lisa Frankenstein is about a misfit teenager, Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton), who tends a Victorian man’s grave. This mysterious bachelor died in 1937, and the sculpted headstone evokes his appearance while alive. One stormy night, she wishes that she could be with him. While her stepsister Taffy (Filipino actor Liza Soberano in her American debut), her father Dale (Joe Chrest), and stepmother/nurse Janet (Carla Gugino) — an intended reference to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)— are out, The Creature (Cole Sprouse) arrives at her stepmother’s home to fulfill Lisa’s wish.
Lisa cleans him up, gives him some clothes, then hides him in her closet. In exchange, he attacks people who hurt her and occasionally will take a body part to replace the ones that he lost. Using her skills as a seamstress, Lisa attaches the body parts and uses her stepsister’s malfunctioning tanning bed to jumpstart The Creature’s healing process. As he begins to look more alive, and the bodies pile up, Lisa realizes that time is running out before they get caught.
“A coming of rage story.”
Newton clearly had a ball playing Lisa. Initially she plays her like a typical smart, quiet, misunderstood kid, but as she spends more time with The Creature, the only person literally and figuratively in her corner, she begins to act more like an ordinary teenager: loquacious, dramatic, selfish, and vengeful.
After she and The Creature engage in mutual makeovers, Lisa becomes a goth version of Helena Bonham Carter in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985). Newton borrows the movements of actors from expressionist silent films with her arms held in a wide diagonal so she fully occupies each scene’s frame and sweeps melodramatically from room to room with a matching line delivery that would not be out of place in May December (2023). Lisa Frankenstein implies that Lisa is drawn to morbid activities: hanging out in overgrown cemeteries, watching zombie movies, etc. While The Creature’s scent repulses her, his creepy-crawly infested body does not bother her, though shedding centipedes would be a turn off for most.
Sprouse is at a disadvantage compared to Nicholas Hoult, who played a zombie capable of consciousness in the horror rom-com Warm Bodies (2013) and looked as attractive as Hoult does in real life with a little pale makeup and blue veins to offset his baby blue eyes. Hoult’s character, who also served as a narrator, had a voice. Because The Creature is covered in mud and seems shapeless, he does not even look like a person.
“It’s better to just accept a guy’s flaws.”
His first onscreen appearance resembles The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), which is deliberately referenced later in the film. As he cleans up, he seems more like an average young man with a little baby fat sporting an outdated, impressive pair of sideburns and Beethoven-esque hair. He also does not talk for most of the film but makes do with his expressions and grunts, which become more fluid proportional to his tanning bed treatments.
His performance imbues dignity into some uproarious scatological moments. Lisa mostly talks at him instead of with him, but Sprouse makes him a person with desires who hopes that Lisa will see him as a feasible romantic option and can have the kind of life that he wants. It is a hard job, and Sprouse rises to the challenge.
While the cast sticks the landing, brilliant writer Diablo Cody, who wrote such hits as Juno (2007) and Young Adult (2011), leaves some gaping holes and introduces contradicting themes that lack cohesion. Through Lisa’s dialogue, Cody rebukes people who move on too quickly, but Cody is guilty of doing the same when creating these characters without fully exploring the emotional impact of Lisa’s actions. Instead, Cody twists the narrative into pretzels to cobble together a certain type of ending, which feels a bit like cheating.
“I really hope this goth phase ends soon.”
Lisa appeared to be a good, misunderstood kid stigmatized for being different and surviving a tragic event, her mother’s murder. Her demeanor is completely understandable considering the circumstances, but her subsequent actions vindicate everything that her detractors say about her. If your best friend is a rotting, homicidal corpse, regardless of how charming he is, maybe she is a little touched. While the film never teases this possibility, could The Creature be a delusion, an alter ego she created in order to cope with all the hardships in her life?
Lisa Frankenstein never revisits the culprit of the offscreen tragedy, but it is hard to ignore the similarity between The Creature’s favored weapon of choice and how an unknown murderer killed her mother. The film never suggests that The Creature was the original attacker, but the identity is never a concern though there are some implications which lend credence to Lisa’s break with reality.
Perhaps Cody’s intention is to argue that death is sudden, meaningless, and inexplicable. Death leaves survivors shaken and different, so the matter of who did it is irrelevant and would not change the emotional impact on the deceased’s loved ones. If Cody wanted moviegoers to make this leap, she did not provide enough connective tissue to bring the audience to such a conclusion.
“Your daughter is a little psycho.”
While Lisa Frankenstein relishes Lisa coming out on top, getting everything that she wants, and finally giving her persecutors a taste of their own medicine, things do get out of hand but never out of control. When Lisa says, “I’m so glad you chose someone good for both of us,” it signals that her anger may be bubbling to the surface against her father for putting her in this predicament, living with the classic mean stepmom. Cody pulls punches and fails to explore Lisa’s broken psyche or be as ruthless with the kills as the dialogue implies. Instead, the slaughtered innocents are nameless characters in the margins.
The film tries to address the issue of prolonged grief. Lisa starts as the normal one reacting appropriately whereas Taffy is stubbornly positive, acts as if Dale is her biological father, and treats Lisa as if she was her sister. Because The Creature’s actions have a direct impact on them, they trade places. Lisa becomes more like an adolescent; Taffy becomes more like Lisa in the opening. Taffy’s transformation makes sense, but Lisa becoming more vapid, shallow and boy-obsessed does not. Though at least it makes for a fun story arc.
Lisa Frankenstein plays Lisa and The Creature’s killing spree for laughs because revenge is more fun than tragedy, but tonally something gets lost in the sauce, and there is never a balance between the joy of vengeance and the devastation of the innocent.
“There are bad people out there.”
Taffy initially feels like a potential enemy when she delivers backhanded compliments like a frenemy, but Lisa defends Taffy as someone who was always on her side. It appears that Cody did not intend for Taffy to give a first bad impression but wanted to make her ruthlessly honest and genuinely sweet. Cody, who nailed the frenemy dynamic in relationships between teenage girls in Jennifer’s Body (2009), falters here and may not have a concept of the ingredients of a genuine, fierce friend.
Director Zelda Williams, the Filipino daughter of all-time great comedian and actor Robin Williams, makes her debut theatrical film with Lisa Frankenstein, which is stylish and pays visual/story homage to the 80s’ aesthetic with lots of neon pinks and blues. Williams includes a lot of nice, animated notes and tributes silent films using the walls of Lisa’s room, which features a still from Le Voyage Dans La Lune (1902) showing the moon’s face with a rocket in its eye.
The horror elements are unflinching, but not graphic or gory. For those bemoaning that Williams ripped off Edward Scissorhands (1990), she did reference Tim Burton as an influence. Williams also includes elements from John Hughes’ Weird Science (1985) with the main difference being that it is girl-centric, and there is no over-idealization or objectification of any character, which is impressive considering that people get reduced to spare parts.
The bottom line.
When it comes to the good-old-fashioned murder mystery unfolding in the background, Williams ultimately falls short. She set up viewers to expect a payoff after the camera lingers on a detail of the first purloined body part, which felt like a setup to another character figuring out everything, but it goes nowhere. It is just another dangling green thread.
And even though Lisa Frankenstein is not a perfect debut for Williams or a consummate comeback for Cody, this labor of love will be a cult favorite with nostalgic needle drops that people will be drooling over, long after it’s buried.
Lisa Frankenstein is now playing in theaters. Watch the trailer here.
Images courtesy of Vertical Entertainment. Read more articles by Sarah G. Vincent here.
REVIEW RATING
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Lisa Frankenstein - 7.5/10
7.5/10
Originally from NYC, freelance writer Sarah G. Vincent arrived in Cambridge in 1993 and was introduced to the world of repertory cinema while working at the Harvard Film Archives. Her work has appeared in Cambridge Day, newspapers, law journals, review websites and her blog, sarahgvincentviews.com.
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