Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

Lisa-Frankenstein-(2024)
Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

Lisa Frankenstein

When was the last time there was a teen movie that felt timeless?

Off the top of my head, I’d go with 2018 which gave us at least three (very different) instant classics in “The Hate U Give,” “Eighth Grade” and “Blockers.” Or maybe you could throw in 2019’s “Booksmart,” too. Either way, it’s been a while.

On paper at least, “Lisa Frankenstein” sounds like it should have been the next great one. A genre bending horror romance comedy mash up written by Diablo Cody who understands teenage girls (“Juno”) and grown women (“Young Adult”) better than perhaps any screenwriter not named Greta Gerwig should be destined for cult greatness. But then so too should Kathryn Newton, who was the best part of among many other things “Blockers” as an ’80s goth girl in Madonna outfits who fell in love with an undead boy and sassily lost her damn mind.

And director Zelda Williams (daughter of Robin), making her feature debut after years working behind the scenes on comedies, would seem to be only spiking the proverbial football.

But here’s the bad news “Lisa Frankenstein” doesn’t work on any level. As a comedy, or coming-of-age flick, or outlandish love story it just leaves you wanting more from all the bloody dishes it serves up. The script is equally to blame as the direction this time around; Cody didn’t push anything far enough while Williams merely matched its timidity on screen with visuals that lacked witchy magic.

The story follows Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton), a misfit whose mother was brutally ax-murdered before her eyes only for her father to marry intolerant Janet (Carla Gugino). Now she just avoids Taffy (Liza Soberano), her popular but nice cheerleader stepsister, and daydreams at the graveyard across the street from school, wishing she were with the dead person in the grave forever marked by an old timey bust. When, after much cruelty from her school crush and predatory lab partner, she makes that wish a bit too literally let’s just say the corpse doesn’t get what Lisa was bidding for and leaves his coffin to join her among the living.

You aren’t to blame for wanting some Beetlejuice-style specificity and cheekiness from Lisa Frankenstein maybe a suggestively peppy song or two and some committedly mischievous performances or something soulful like Edward Scissorhands. Cole Sprouse’s smitten monster corpse does his best young sad Johnny Depp impression for a little while, he’s oddly fun to watch but the film never meets its own ambitions to blend genres. So nothing gooey, bloody or corny sticks in “Lisa Frankenstein” not even when Lisa and her monster go hunting for human appendages to finish the Victorian era creature’s spare parts. Never before has the quest of a murderous teen in extremely ’80s outfits been this unexciting to embark on, even with a more-than-capable Newton at its side.

Credit where credit is due Cody’s script, which is clearly winking at Mary Shelley’s classic, is a rare gamble in today’s landscape that has its heart in the right place for all the oddball kids who just want to be seen and accepted with their weirdnesses. Elsewhere, both she and Williams are clearly vibing with an idea of the ’80s as it exists in these characters’ collective unconscious the golden age of high school movies that would have embraced a movie like “Lisa Frankenstein.” But somewhere along the way they seem to have forgotten to reanimate the spirit of what made those flicks sing; there is a strange dullness throughout “Lisa Frankenstein” that feels flat even around its power ballad bona fides (REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling”) or despite its magenta heavy production design.

At its best moments, it feels like Williams’ debut feature shares much DNA with its central monster, undead, but nowhere really worth going. It’s disappointing in more than one plane of existence.

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