Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

The feature debut from director Zelda Williams, who has already amassed a number of shorts and music videos to her name, Lisa Frankenstein is a film I have been keen to see since I first heard about it. It stars Kathryn Newton (a plus), it is another horror comedy written by Diablo Cody (another plus, and I am someone else who always enjoyed Jennifer’s Body, please enjoy that rough and brief review), and it has a late 1980s setting and vibe (plus). This should have been a home run for me. It was not.

Newton plays Lisa Swallows, a young woman who doesn’t feel as if she fits in anywhere. She doesn’t have her own people at school. She keeps engaging in an exhausting battle of wills with her step-mother (played by Carla Gugino). She doesn’t even seem to enjoy living as much as most people, and that is how she is well-suited to becoming a friend to someone who unexpectedly returns from the dead (Cole Sprouse). Can this other outsider help her resolve a number of issues, or will he just make Lisa more determined to loathe those living their lives in relative bliss.

It is all too easy to review this movie by making the obvious comparisons to Frankenstein’s creation. The tonal shifts are jarring, a number of elements don’t work as well as they could, and it is constructed in a way that leads to a clumsy and ugly result. Nobody should want to lead an angry mob to set this on fire, but I can certainly see why it hasn’t been a roaring success (although I am sure it will do better in the home rental/retail/streaming market).

Unlike her previous work, Cody doesn’t seem to know what main points she wants to make here. There’s no obvious target, although the scattershot approach tries, and fails, to hit a number of small bullseyes. Williams does nothing to help, seemingly focused on the style and aesthetic ahead of a cohesive and satisfying narrative through-line, so it’s up to the cast to lift the film up.

Fortunately, Newton is an absolute star. Sprouse, limited by the character he is playing, also does well, but the film brightens up whenever it stops just to let Newton shine brighter, which she gets to do on a few different occasions (a rendition of a well-known ‘80s hit being the highlight of the whole film). Gugino is fun, as is Liza Soberano (playing Lisa’s sister, Taffy). Henry Eikenberry also does well, playing Michael, the object of Lisa’s unrequited affection, and Joe Chrest is an amusingly passive father. None of them rival Newton though, and I continue to look forward to watching anything that she’s in.

I still found enough separate elements here to enjoy, but it was hard work. There are so many decisions made here that fall short of the mark, from the soundtrack to ineffectual backstories for our leads, from the awkward early scenes to a bold, but slightly mishandled, ending. Some will be able to overlook the main failings and love it, and I already know one or two friends who had much more fun with this than I did, but I was saddened to find that the bad counter-balanced the good throughout, forcing me to mark this as an absolutely average viewing experience.

5/10

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