Undead and Loving It
Directed by Zelda Williams
Starring Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse, Carla Gugino
Released February 9th, 2024
Rated PG-13
It can be a profound experience when you watch a film for the first time, and you get the feeling it was made specifically for you. Hopefully we’ve all had that experience. There are many movies that have made me feel like that, including Garden State and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Some of these are moody, heady films, but others can be light and breezy. Lisa Frankenstein belongs in the latter category, a fun ride that feels like it was built to suit my taste. I loved this film, and I hope it eventually finds an audience that will embrace its specific brand of quirkiness.
Offbeat teenager Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) lives with her lackadaisical father Dale (Joe Chrest), cruel stepmother Janet (Carla Gugino), and surprisingly supportive stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano). Lisa has a crush on a boy in her school named Michael Trent (Henry Eikenberry) – a clever nod to the Nine Inch Nails maestro? – but prefers to spend her time alone in a nearby graveyard, serenading the final resting place of a long-dead Victorian-era boy. Lisa reads him poetry and leaves gifts on his gravestone.
Thanks to a malfunctioning tanning bed, Lisa is able to reanimate the corpse of her deathly beloved. She stuffs the newly awakened zombie (Cole Sprouse) in her closet, outfitting him with cool band T-shirts (including Peter Murphy and Violent Femmes) while figuring out what to do next. This zombie is not an aggressive brain-eater, but he does find himself in need of missing body parts, which leads to dead bodies piling up as Lisa and the creature frantically evade police, friends, and family.
Written by Academy Award winner Diablo Cody, Lisa Frankenstein is the feature-length directorial debut of Zelda Williams (Robin’s daughter). Williams brings Cody’s script to life with loving care. For all of the blood and dismemberment, there is a sweetness present in the proceedings. I appreciate what Williams brings to the movie, with interesting scene transitions and a reverence for the 1980s setting. Other films set in the ‘80s just mock the decade (I’m looking at you, Totally Killer), instead of attempting to embody it. Lisa Frankenstein feels like a video store rental you’d discover in the fall of 1989, with the fashions, music, and vernacular coming across as authentic rather than standard manufactured nostalgia. Lisa Frankenstein works as a companion piece to darker teen comedies such as Heathers, Beetlejuice, and My Boyfriend’s Back.
I’ve enjoyed Diablo Cody’s collaborations with Charlize Theron in Young Adult and Tully but I don’t think any actor has done a better job delivering Cody’s dialogue than Elliot Page when he starred as the title character in Juno. That is, until Kathryn Newton’s performance here as the cheekily named Lisa Swallows. Newton, never better, displays the perfect amount of knowing nuance to her very dry line readings. Newton really understood the assignment. I give Cole Sprouse credit for accepting a role (almost) completely devoid of dialogue. Save for a single reading of a poem at the film’s conclusion, Sprouse is mute, managing to make his reanimated corpse endearing as he channels Johnny Depp’s silent film-inspired performance as the title character in Edward Scissorhands. I’m used to seeing the great Carla Gugino play badass women, so it’s a kick to watch her as a stuck-up stepmother. A different kind of role for her, but she kills it, as she always does.
Lisa Frankenstein doesn’t appear to be burning up the box office, but hopefully the film will have a critical re-evaluation in the coming years, much like Jennifer’s Body, another Diablo Cody film that took a while to find its champions. This is a film bursting with personality, from the fun references to Georges Méliès to the posters of Bauhaus and The Creature from the Black Lagoon on Lisa Swallows’ bedroom walls. I even noticed a copy of Poppy Z. Brite’s wonderful vampire novel Lost Souls on Lisa’s bookshelf.
There is a great joke involving the band The Cure that made me laugh out loud, but the rest of the (small) audience that was in the movie theater just sat there stone-faced. This is indeed a movie that will appeal mostly to a very specific group of people, namely 1980s goths – and that’s me! If a Rocky Horror Picture Showreference would make you smile, and you know who The Jesus and Mary Chain are, there is a good chance you’ll love Lisa Frankenstein.