DIY boyfriend, hard mode - Lisa Frankenstein (2024)
may we all today be blesséd by the music of REO Speedwagon
Hold on, wait a minute, THTH is actually talking about something released in the current year we’re in, fucking hell I’ll get the champagne out.
Some spoilers, natch. TW for brief mentions of assault.
Lisa Frankenstein
Directed by: Zelda Williams
Written by: Diablo Cody
Starring: Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse, Liza Sobrano, Henry Eikenberry, Joe Chrest, Carla Gugino
Genre: horror/comedy
Run time: 101 minutes
but first!
Yes, we’re truly being blessed with a string of new horror releases in the next few weeks and months (the trailer reel we got before Lisa Frankenstein legit had trailers for all of the movies I’ll be discussing this month, I was LIVING), and you best believe I’ll be getting my goblin hands on them and discussing them with you. However, as a general ground rule (I think this is the first time I’ve properly covered a new release since The Menu in 2022) I am not going to go as deep into the new releases as I do with older stuff - mainly because I don’t want to spoil a brand new movie completely for you.
HOWEVER. I reserve the right to 1) break that rule in case the film is pants (imo), 2) come back to a movie further down the line to properly give it the full THTH treatment.
Got that, got that, good, now get your bottle of Aqua Net and put on your Galaxie 500 LP because Zelda Williams is taking us to the eighties, baybee.
The plot in short
It’s 1989. High schooler Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton), is lonely and still shaken after the traumatic home invasion that cost her mother’s life months prior. Her father Dale (Joe Chrest) has already remarried, adding to Lisa’s life a fucking ghoulish stepmother named Janet (Carla Gugino) and a well-intentioned stepsister, Taffy (Liza Soberano). Lisa spends time alone in a nearby cemetery, taking crayon rubbings from the grave stones and tending to the grave of a young Victorian man.
Taffy takes Lisa to a house party, but after a one-two punch of a horrific drink spiking along with an attempted sexual assault from her lab partner Doug (Bryce Romero), Lisa stumbles home through the cemetery as a strange green thunder rumbles in the sky. She expresses her wish to be with the Victorian man, something that comes true in the absolute weirdest way possible as lightning resurrects the man as a lovesick zombie, something Lisa discovers when he barrels through the living room window the next night, non-verbal, missing several limbs and shedding bugs as he goes.
And yet, through a series of increasingly batshit happenings including but not limited to science experiments by way of tanning bed electrocution, Lisa and the Creature (Cole Sprouse) grow closer…
The good
The opening sequence, in which we get the Creature’s backstory through the medium of paper cut animation (a moment most pleasing to me, a paper crafter myself).
The trippy black and white dream sequence which has shades of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s legendary video for Tonight, Tonight by The Smashing Pumpkins (itself inspired by Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon).
Cole Sprouse, the MVP of this movie, which is no mean feat in a role which 99 percent physical and non-verbal.
The scene where the Creature accompanies Lisa on the piano while she feels her 80s soft rock fantasy belting out Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore by REO Speedwagon.
Kathryn Newton slowly dialing up the goth fashion button until it reaches frankly aspirational levels near the end.
Kathryn Newton, in general, queen of the modern horror comedy, stream Freaky if you haven’t yet, she is fucking awesome in both it and this.
Liza Soberano stumbling onto the road in a bloody Nietzsche shirt and slouchy boots like a direct descendant of Sally Hardesty.
The romance between Lisa and the Creature is strangely wholesome given the everything else about it.
The fact that Lisa works part-time as a seamstress is a nice touch, as is the fact that science experiment tanning bed comes from a brand called Kiss of Life.
The not-so-good
Carla Gugino’s Janet has absolutely zero redeeming features, seriously, there’s “wicked stepmother” tropes and then there’s Janet who is quite possibly actually evil.
Dale as a character is like “what if we made a sitcom dad but forgot to give him any trait at all”, bless Joe Chrest but it’s a nothing burger of a role.
The bare bones of the story is an interesting premise but it does struggle in places to execute it; the romance between the Creature and Lisa does not get the time it needs to breathe so while it’s charming (especially towards the end), it could have done with more time spent on it.
Overall, Lisa Frankenstein is a fun but patchy time. I am looking forward to seeing more of Zelda Williams as a director, and I will always have time for Diablo Cody’s writing, as well as a bitchin’ 80s soundtrack.
What can I say, I’m a simple creature.