There are some movies that exist to fully define a generation, and Lisa Frankenstein has that ability. The latest Diablo Cody film gives the weird kids a movie to cling to. Directed by Zelda Williams, it is everyone’s twisted ’80s fantasy reanimated by a tanning bed.
Lisa (Kathryn Newton) is forced to live in a perfect little home with her father and stepmother (Carla Gugino) after the gruesome death of her mother. Now going to school with her stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano), Lisa is forced to deal with everyday high school things when she’d rather spend her time in the abandoned graveyard in the woods, where her beloved victorian corpse resides.
It is, at its core, our very own Victor Frankenstein, but if the story had a lot more hairspray and if Lisa Frank herself threw up on it. Everything about this movie has made me want to make it my entire personality, falling in love with a dead guy and all.
Through Williams’ direction (and the inspiration of movies like Death Becomes Her), you feel instantly transported not only to the ’80s setting but to the twisted world that is Lisa’s reality. The absolutely brutal death of her mother that colors her every emotion is played just as campy as Lisa talking to her sister Taffy. Seeing the Frankenstein-esque creation (played by Cole Sprouse) slowly try to use limbs that no longer work should be horrifying, and yet we’re obsessed with every aspect of his recreation.
Much like other films in Cody’s catalog, what makes Lisa Frankenstein such a bright light is that it gives us a hilariously genuine look at the absurd, but it also gives those darker adolescents something to hold on to and make completely their own.
Nothing is quite as good as a tanning bed corpse
One of the things I longed for most was another of Cody’s stories that sang out to me, the weirdo girl in school. For all my jokes and smiles, I was also dark and a bit twisted and wished that it was Halloween every single day of the year. Movies like Jennifer’s Body and now Lisa Frankenstein speak to that. But it is also just a testament to Cody’s work as a whole that she is constantly reinventing her “style” to fit the story she’s telling.
One of the things that works so incredibly well in a movie like this though is the acting. Newton’s humor and, at times, deadpan stare, mixed with Soberano’s sincerity as Taffy, really makes the outrageous, nearly silent performance from Sprouse seem completely grounded in the outrageousness surrounding them. There is a heart to this movie that makes it work when everything is telling you that this is too out there to make sense. But Newton and Soberano’s dynamic grounds everything to both Lisa and Taffy’s reality and makes you care very deeply for them, even when Lisa is spiraling.
Lisa Frankenstein may be its own Frankenstein story (inspired by movies like Weird Science), but she’s also so unique, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes it work so well. Maybe it is just that no matter how old we are, if we have that darker side to us, we want to thrive with movies like this. Or maybe we just haven’t had a good campy horror-esque story in a while. Whichever it is, it makes Lisa Frankenstein one of the best of not only Cody’s career, but the best of this campy genre.
There are truly and honestly not enough good things to say about this movie, and I am not kidding, I want to start teasing my hair up and wearing all black just to look half as cool as Lisa does.
(featured image: Focus Features)
