Lisa Frankenstein

A misunderstood teenager and her reanimated Victorian corpse of a boyfriend embark on a murderous journey together through the suburbs, all in an effort to find love, happiness, and a few missing body parts.

Written by Minneapolis local favorite Diablo Cody, someone who has always been a hit and miss bet at best, Lisa Frankenstein is the tale of a boy-crazy teen girl and her zombie boyfriend as they try to break free of the chains that bind them to the plastic consumer hell that is suburban America. It’s a movie that mostly just feels like Tina Belcher fanfic of better films from thirty years ago.

All it’s really missing is horses.

And more butts, of course.

Oh, Tina…

Set in a dayglo-pop suburban wasteland version of 1989 not seen since the Coreys dreamed a little dream, Lisa Swallows is a lonely teenage girl who is still struggling to come to terms with the loss of her mother, killed two years previous by a masked axe murderer, a piece of backstory that honestly has no other real involvement in the plot beyond that mention. In the time since, Lisa's father has gotten remarried to a horrid woman, which means Lisa now has an evil stepmother, and a popular and cheerful stepsister named Taffy.

She’s so over it, she can’t even.

Lisa spends her days doing the goth kid thing, daydreaming at a nearby cemetery, making etchings, and mooning over the old bust atop her favorite tombstone, wishing the dead boy in the grave was her boyfriend. Ball lightning, teenage frustration, a dose of PCP, and a perfectly timed, driven by teen angst, magically granted wish revives the long dead corpse, sending the duo on a heavy-handed, too-long, and ultimately failed attempt to skewer the neon-soaked, consumer-driven, and mundane plastic culture of the 1980s, in this cheaply hyperstylized, sedately blood-soaked, John Hughes meets John Waters wannabe world.

The most shocking thing about this film is that it never had one of the mean, mall-coiffed, suburban children make the obvious joke about Lisa’s last name. Unless I just wasn’t paying attention when it happened, which is possible…

A lot of people ding Cody for her dialogue, calling it out for being unbelievable, but that’s a little like pointing out that it’s unrealistic that Superman flies. I mean, no shit, Sherlock, but this is what Diablo Cody does, so if you don’t want to get wet, then you shouldn’t jump into this particular pool.

Still, just because the work is intended to be this way, that doesn’t mean that it’s enjoyable, or even well done. There’s definitely some funny lines, and at one point, there is a pretty funny dick joke, but it’s not nearly enough to sustain the whole film, which is basically a tedious, low rent, wannabe Heathers meets a wannabe Beetlejuice meets a wannabe Edward Scissorhands. And while, admittedly, I am a little biased… Kathryn Newton is definitely no Winona Ryder.

Not even close.

This is really the story of the whole film… It doesn’t come anywhere close to the much better films it’s… apeing? Homaging? Mimicking? Stealing from? Whatever the case, the simple fact is, Lisa Frankenstein lacks all charm, all sincerity, and all bite. And for a film that is nothing but bright ‘80s fluorescents, it’s shockingly colorless. I’d call it all style and no substance, but it doesn’t even have good style. It’s no style, and no substance.

It’s not even a fun but noble failure, like Jennifer’s Body.

The strangest part about this film, is how it’s so intent on this thirty-years-too-late message of “look how fake and awful the 80s were,” but it’s also obviously meant as a sneering and self-aware parody, so why would you care about the commentary when the film itself doesn’t believe it has any real value? On top of that, everything about this film feels so incredibly dated and out-of-step, just an aging hipster at the back of the club, regaling the wait staff with tales of past too-cool glory, all while complaining that the music is too loud to talk, and that beer costs so much now. Like, “Oooo, tell us more about the time you got sushi and didn’t pay, Grandma!”

I can’t imagine this movie appealing to an older crowd, or a younger one. I can’t even tell who this film even thinks it’s for, other than the kind of people who still claim to be mad that MTV doesn’t play music videos anymore.

In the end, Lisa Frankenstein doesn’t work on any level. It’s not a comedy. It’s not a horror film. It’s not a coming-of-age flick. It’s not an outlandish love story. It’s not a metaphor for wild teenage first loves. It’s not even a parody of any of those things.

It’s just…bad.