I'm not going to lie...LISA FRANKENSTEIN was disappointing. Despite a few clever twists and a couple of worthwhile performances, it feels somehow lazy and disjointed. This is a film that wants to walk a tightrope between comedy and horror, but to complicate things, the comedy part of the tightrope is made up of satire and rom-com, and the horror side wants to be "R-rated" (some R-rated body part severing) with a "PG" vibe. I would have hoped writer Diablo Cody might have pulled it off, but it was probably almost too much to ask.
Lisa is a high-schooler who is living with her dad and step-mom and step-sister a couple of years after she witnessed her mother being brutally murdered by an axe-wielding home invader (and almost succumbing herself). This trauma has turned her (apparently...she may have already been this way) into a kind of proto-goth (the film takes place in the late '80s) who would rather hang out at the nearby abandoned cemetery than do any "normal" high school things. This character is pretty insufferable, despite her tragic background, because we're not asked to really feel anything for her. It's fortunate that the extremely affable Kathryn Newton (so good in FREAKY) is playing Lisa...she makes the character almost convincing. The character we actually root for the most is the step-sister, Taffy, a popular cheerleader who actually loves her step-sister and wants to be her friend and help her...genuinely. It's such a shock to see the cliché turned on its head, we have to root for this character, who is very agreeably played by Liza Soberano.
One night, an electric storm brings one of the old corpses in the cemetery to life. Luckily for this creature (known in the credits as "The Creature") finds his way to Lisa, who is immediately enamored of this man. He's silent, sorta dead and perhaps handsome underneath his decay. Turns out, he can be revitalized a bit at a time by spending a few minutes in a sparking, defective tanning bed (another amusing conceit of Cody's). He's missing a few body parts, but that's nothing that Lisa and her new friend can't take care of by stealing parts off folks they've killed.
Where should our loyalties lie while watching the film? We feel a little sorry for The Creature, but the longer he's around, the clearer it is he doesn't really have any noble qualities. Lisa is just insane. The teens in the high school are paper-thin stereotypes. The hunk Lisa longs for is an uninteresting cypher. Lisa's dad is a clueless idiot (this character is so poorly conceived that I almost have to applaud the creators of the film...in a world where thousands of characters are hard to believe, LISA FRANKENSTEIN has come up with a "dad of a troubled teen" who truly behaves with zero believability and who apparently literally has no motivation for existing). And the step-mother is an updated "wicked" character, but as played by Carla Gugino, is so over-the-top awful and stupid that it beggars belief that she could have a child like Taffy.
Lots of things happen in the movie. Some are funny. None are actually scary or particularly gory. Some would call it a black comedy, but despite all the death and murder, it's not that black. There is some fun music. But visually, it feels like a low budget knock-off of the EDWARD SCISSORHANDS aesthetic. And The Creature immediately evokes Edward.
The film is not a complete failure, and there are moments that are fun or charming. But I had hoped for more, and more consistent handling of tone and character. It feels like a sketch show, where some moments land well and others land with a thud. I still give the movie a VERY SLIGHT thumbs-up...but I think there was a better movie buried here...if Cody had brought more care to the script and if director Zelda Williams had pushed her secondary cast a bit more. The film feels low budget, so maybe time & money didn't allow. That would be a shame.
In the end, this movie that clearly wants to emerge as a cult favorite, is likely doomed to fade into obscurity.
