It is amusing to imagine how Mary Shelley’s scientist character Victor Frankenstein, with his dogged scientific pursuits and intellectual achievements, might react to giving life to something as haywire and horny as Lisa Frankenstein. Director Zelda Williams and writer Diablo Cody make it feel like a bit of a no-brainer: surely the only reason for re-animating a rotting corpse (a handsome one, mind you) is to give purpose to your lonely little life?
Lisa Frankenstein is dubbed a “coming of rage”, a neat riff on both the seminal horror text about a misshapen man back from the dead and the teen rite-of-passage blueprint in which a young girl desperately tries to fit in. Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton, spiky with great comedic timing) doesn’t necessarily need everyone to like her – but just a little more attention would be nice.
A perfect role for Sprouse, virtually wordless but bringing humour and care to the smallest gestures.
She makes up for her lacklustre home life (uninvolved dad after a freak tragedy killed her mum, overbearing stepmother, kind-hearted but over-achieving stepsister) by seeking refuge in the nearby cemetery. She has a favourite grave – it’s his. The Creature is never named, but during one fatal storm his body rises from the ground and, well, Cole Sprouse (Riverdale’s Jughead!) ends up in Lisa’s room.
And so begins a story of young love, extreme makeover, gentle murder and self-discovery along the way. The film refuses to settle on just one thing, having fun with the body horror elements of The Creature’s slow return to life (a perfect role for Sprouse, virtually wordless but bringing humour and care to the smallest gestures) and Lisa’s sudden lust for murder — as well as high school politics, issues of consent, impossible beauty standards and more. Williams mixes it all together and turns up the volume on the excess and ambition of the ‘80s with a poppy jukebox soundtrack and countless high-octane outfits that clearly saw Grease and turned the tanning bed up to the max.
There’s fun to be had in the genre exercise and through the sheer charisma of the young stars, but Cody – undoubtedly one of the strongest writers of our generation – gives Lisa and her lover so much to do that it can feel a bit jumbled. Murder isn’t really the end of the world; the revelation that a rickety tanning bed can reanimate the love of your life is only, really, the first chapter. Will they even stay together? Did anybody actually deserve to die? Perhaps to ponder just how fun such horrors can all be is enough.
