Director Zelda Williams’ horror comedy Lisa Frankenstein is a mediocre pastiche of older films with an uneven storyline stitched together from overly familiar macabre material. The film will appeal mainly to teens who are only just beginning to discover its sources, but to longtime moviegoers, it plays like ersatz Tim Burton, admittedly with occasionally hilarious moments.
In 1989, Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) is a misfit at her new high school, stuck in suburbia with her sickeningly cheerful stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano), clueless dad (Joe Chrest), and vile stepmother (Carla Gugino). Shy and withdrawn, she wrestles with the trauma of hearing her mother hacked up by an ax murderer.
Disconsolate, Lisa tends a grave in the abandoned Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery, pining for its 19th-century tenant (Cole Sprouse). Meanwhile, she’s smitten with her school’s lit mag editor, Trent (Henry Eikenberry). A freak electrical storm animates the corpse she’s been visiting, who then shows up literally on her doorstep. She hides him, and using Taffy’s malfunctioning tanning bed, gradually revivifies the creature and this cold, dead thing proves to be the warm protector her life has lacked.
Screenwriter Diablo Cody and Williams (Robin’s daughter) blatantly draw on many earlier, better movies, including Heathers, Carrie, and the Universal Frankenstein series. The shadow of Tim Burton’s work looms over the plot and the main characters’ style, particularly his Frankenweenie and Edward Scissorhands. Lisa Frankenstein is essentially an introductory class in goth culture for angsty kids who have just discovered The Cure. With that in mind, youngsters who are barely familiar with these venerable old favorites may enjoy seeing them.
Gleaning inspiration from its cinematic ancestors is one thing, but Cody’s script lacks the wit or tonal coherence of a great horror comedy like Young Frankenstein. Although she has definitely improved since Juno, the dialogue and storyline get overburdened with ’80s nostalgia references in the “Stranger Things” mode. They run the gamut from Orange Crush soda to a clip from George Romero’s Day of the Dead. The most successful, sweetest allusions are the recurring tributes to Georges Melies’ silent classic Voyage to the Moon.
The violence and sexuality in Lisa Frankenstein stretch about as far as the PG-13 rating will allow. Like many of the 1980s comedies it’s inspired by, most of the movie’s funniest moments are its lowest and most sophomoric.
Newton is fine as Lisa, especially given how middling the material is. Sprouse is decent as her undead beau, but his performance doesn’t fully explore the character’s potential. The rest of the cast does respectable work, and the costumes and production design are acceptable. But, overall, there is very little that’s outstanding here.
Made for a reported $13 million and with a running time that doesn’t strain endurance, Lisa Frankenstein is a fair piece of work, yet fails to maintain the balance between charming morbidity and humaneness that a masterpiece like Frank Oz’s Little Shop of Horrors pulls off. Younger viewers who, like Lisa, are trapped in high school purgatory might enjoy watching her exact Carrie White-like revenge and enthusiastically root for the film’s central couple. For a lot of viewers, it will just seem like a ragged, reanimated mass shambling out of a celluloid graveyard.