Zelda Williams – 'Lisa Frankenstein' movie review

Making her first foray into directing, Zelda Williams has delivered the horror comedy Lisa Frankenstein, starring Kathryn Newton in the lead role, plus Cole Sprouse, Liza Soberano, Joe Chrest and Carla Gugino. It’s been written by Diablo Cody of Juno and Jennifer’s Body, with Cody claiming Williams’ directorial debut takes place in the same universe as the latter work.

Newton plays an outcast teenage goth in this twee-shock homage to the 1980s, a misunderstood young woman in the throes of loneliness and trauma a few months after a home invader has murdered her mother. Remarried to a true narcissist of a woman, Lisa’s father moves his daughter in with his new wife and stepdaughter, living a life of domestic and blissful ignorance.

As a remedy for her inner turmoil and alienation from her peers and family members, Lisa, like any goth worth their black eyeliner and Bauhaus records, spends her time at her local abandoned cemetery, reading Poe-esque verse to the grave of a Victorian man who died in 1937. After making the ill-fated wish of being “with him” – meaning, of course, her own death – a strange bolt of green lightning strikes the headstone, leading to the reanimation of the corpse.

What follows is Lisa’s attempt to hide the once-dead creature (morbidly played by Sprouse) from her family, replacing his missing body parts and slowly fashioning him into her ideal man. She must also naturally traverse all the pitfalls of high school life with its cliques, crushes, sexual discoveries, triumphs and misfortunes, plus the wrath of her awful stepmother, in a narrative move recalling the nostalgic works of John Hughes.

In that light, Lisa Frankenstein does an admirable job of paying its respect to the 1980s with a brilliant soundtrack including Echo and the Bunnymen, Galaxie 500, The Jesus and Mary Chain and REO Speedwagon. This is complemented by a campy visual aesthetic that can at once portray the sugar-sweet cheerleaders of late 20th-century high school and the goth icons of years gone by. These include Siouxsie Sioux and Robert Smith of The Cure, the latter of whom Newton can occasionally bear a striking physical similarity to.

Both Sprouse and Newton give commendable performances, but Lisa Frankenstein simply suffers from not actually being funny or indeed frightening. It’s a strange experience watching a comedy movie in a room full of other people and its many desperately shocking jokes. These range from vibrator masturbation, genital mutilation and foul-smelling liquids to narcissistic mothers and tongue-in-cheek pop cultural references, but they never actually raise more than embarrassed and pitiful sniggers.

Throw into the mix a pastiche of the great horror movies of days gone by, and Lisa Frankenstein, unfortunately, seems to stink of unoriginality, serving as a mere homage to the past rather than a celebration or revitalisation of it, which is somewhat ironic considering its reanimation motif. Production and performance-wise, the film just about manages to entertain – perhaps more so for a teenage audience – and Williams does a commendable job of tying it all together in her first feature debut. Still, sadly, this corpse is better off staying put in its grave.

Check out the trailer for Lisa Frankenstein below.

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