Kathryn Newton shines as the awkward but delightfully endearing Lisa Swallows. *spoiler-free review!*

The coming-of-age genre gets a fun, colorful, and occasionally bloody twist with Lisa Frankenstein, a feature directorial debut by Zelda Williams. It’s 1989, and Lisa is a high school senior who just moved to a new town with her dad and his new wife. She has a step sister named Taffy, played by the lovely Liza Soberano. Taffy means well, but Lisa is still very isolated from her peers. Lisa spends her free time sitting in a graveyard, daydreaming and looking at the statue on top of her “favorite” grave. After one particularly miserable social interaction, Lisa stumbles into the graveyard, and whispers “I wish I was with you…” to the statue. Lightning strikes dramatically, and of course, a few hours later… He shows up at her front door.

“The Creature,” as Cole Sprouse is credited, is drawn to Lisa, who quickly realizes what happened. “I meant, I wished I was also in the ground! Dead! Not… with you… here…” she says. Her room is covered in Universal Classic Monsters posters, however, so she clearly has some knowledge on the matter. Boris Karloff’s The Mummy and The Creature from the Black Lagoon posters are both in frame for a number of scenes, a delightful easter egg to the original adaptation of the source material and its universe. At the start of the film, Lisa had recently been diagnosed with “traumatic mutism” since the death of her mother, but soon she starts to tell the Creature everything about her life and finally feels like someone cares about what she has to say. The Creature can’t speak, but that doesn’t really slow Lisa down–He’s an excellent listener and she’s adept at understanding what he’s thinking as he points or looks at her in certain ways. The chemistry between Newton and Sprouse is amusing and lighthearted, which is especially impressive when considering Sprouse is embodying a nonverbal animated corpse.

In a very Edward Scissorhands meets Rocky Horror-style fashion, the film has a beautiful pastel color palette, with pink home exteriors and pastel yellow interior decoration, that the Creature noticeably stands out against. Within later scenes in Lisa’s room, or in the tanning bed, the bright neon colors and dark shadows provide an escape from the pastels, and with Lisa he looks less out of place. As the film progresses and Lisa’s friendship with the Creature gives her more confidence, we see her come to life when she begins wearing more and more dramatic dark clothing, standing out against the background of her town. These creative decisions really enhance the general atmosphere of the film and make the world feel dynamic and compelling.

After writing the highly acclaimed Juno and the recently rediscovered Jennifer’s Body, it only makes sense that Diablo Cody’s script for Lisa Frankenstein is full of clever dialogue and a carefully balanced darkly humorous tone. As bodies start dropping (or disappearing), there’s a juxtaposition between the lightness and humor involved in Lisa and The Creature’s reactions towards their violence and Taffy’s fear and uncertainty surrounding the situation. These interactions are so cleverly played by Newton and Soberano, with their difference in attitudes towards the unfolding events acting like a tug-of-war with the tone. Cody does this in Jennifer’s Body, too, when beyond every witty line of dialogue, hair flip, or life taken, we see scenes of the victim’s families mourning them, or mothers wailing up to the sky over the loss of their son. This addition, in both films, allows for the comedy to exist alongside an underlined anguish. In both films, characters like Jennifer, or Lisa or The Creature, don’t have much of a reaction to the consequences of their actions, but their close friends or family do, which raises the stakes for the audience without disturbing the balance of the film entirely, and leaves room for the comedy to take precedence.

Lisa Frankenstein is incredibly fun, very well-designed, and filled with clever dialogue with exciting performances to back it up. I would recommend it to anyone who is a fan of Diablo Cody, spends too much time on TikTok, or just likes watching girls be a bit unhinged in the name of love. If you’re looking for something fun to do for a couple hours this weekend, I suggest stopping into a local movie theater to check it out. It’s a film I can see myself revisiting often! I feel like it has a good shot at finding its target audience, and if so could even become a cult classic in the same vein as Heathers or Jennifer’s Body.

I absolutely love when a female director’s feature directorial debut is this good. Zelda Williams is an exciting new voice on the film scene. Because her sense of style and tone is really sharp, I look forward to seeing what she does next—whether it’s a similar outing or a completely different beast altogether.

xxx
kendall