In some ways, it’s quite fitting that Lisa Frankenstein is one of those movies that just has to wait for its time to come.
It’s never fun to see a movie you love go underseen and underappreciated when it hits theaters, but that’s exactly what happened with Zelda Williams’ feature directorial debut when it landed in theaters just before Valentine’s Day in February 2024. Many mainstream critics didn’t respond to it, audiences didn’t turn up in sufficient numbers, and it became one of those films people just have to find, an artifact full of wonder waiting to be discovered by those who can really appreciate its quirks and tonal brilliance.
It’s happened many times before. Lisa Frankenstein writer Diablo Cody experienced it firsthand not too long ago with what’s now a bona fide cult classic, Jennifer’s Body. But what makes the Lisa Frankenstein experience a bit different, for me anyway, is its place as a film that’s textually devoted to the very idea that you have to wait for your time to come, that appreciation and joy and love often emerge from unexpected places. It’s a movie about the horrors of feeling adrift in a world that doesn’t understand you, and the romantic notion that someone could come along and sweep you away from that world and into one of your own choosing. For that reason, and many others, it’s one of those films that deserves to find its place as a romantic horror-comedy classic, no matter how long it takes.
I’m going to try and explain why without spoiling too much for the uninitiated, so let’s start with what we all know: Lisa (Kathryn Newton) is a teenaged girl living in a newly blended family in 1989, who doesn’t feel understood or even particularly liked by her peers or her parents. Her stepsister Taffy (Liza Soberano) tries to initiate her into the upper tiers of high school society, but Lisa would rather visit the local abandoned cemetery, where she talks to a gravestone featuring a carving of a handsome man, leaving him trinkets and pouring out her heart.
Lisa’s fixation on death, something viewed as out and out mental illness by her wicked stepmother Janet (a fiercely committed and breathtaking Carla Gugino), comes from the recent loss of her mother to a graphic axe murder that left Lisa herself post-traumatically mute for a while and has led her to live by the maxim that no one should be forgotten. For Lisa, you see, her mom has been forgotten, by a father (Joe Chrest) who’s already moved on, and by a world that would rather see her as the weird kid than simply let her process things her own way.
One wild party and a well-placed lightning strike later, and Lisa is suddenly confronted with the resurrected corpse of her cemetery dream man (Cole Sprouse), who feels an immediate affection for her in return for her kindness, setting the stage for a macabre adventure that might blossom into romance.
This is the kind of plot that lends itself to a wild ’80s throwback movie in the vein of Weird Science, and while that vibe is certainly there, Lisa Frankenstein is so much more than nostalgia. Cody’s script is packed with deliberate synchronicities – an axe murder later in the film mirrors what happened to Lisa’s mom, a lightning strike of death can also be a lightning strike of life, and so on – and beautifully organized emotional arcs, while keeping the same quirky rhythm that made so many of those ’80s films beloved and never quite veering into the realm of “weren’t the ’80s so silly” digs masquerading as satire. Too many stories built on nostalgia want to make things all about how backwards and materialistic and shallow the ’80s were, but Lisa Frankenstein relishes its period details, and uses them to build a rigid framework of life against which Lisa can rebel.
It’s also, crucially and unlike many actual ’80s movies, a film about how far nonconformity can actually get you. Lisa’s never after acceptance, never willing to change who she is for the sake of others who don’t actually care about her. Instead, the strange detour that brings a literal dead man into her life is fuel for a transformation, a Frankenstein-ing of her own interests, desires, and wicked sense of humor into a new Lisa, not beholden to social norms but existing in spite of them. Newton, a modern horror master at this point in her career, pulls this off beautifully, transforming Lisa into a Black Swan by way of Heathers and Stevie Nicks music videos, and Sprouse is remarkably game not just for the gallows humor of it all, but for the tenderness.
Because that’s the real trick to Lisa Frankenstein. When all that period details fall away, when the bloodshed and the darkly comic sci-fi elements leave you, it’s a film about the importance of sincere, uncomplicated tenderness, not just with someone else, but with yourself. Yes, a romance blossoms, as anyone who’s seen the trailers knows, and the film becomes a wonderful love story about two weirdos just trying to make it in the world. But Lisa Frankenstein‘s greatest love story, and the one that might hit you the hardest this Valentine’s Day, is Lisa’s love story with herself. It’s a movie, for all its genre trappings, about the joy of finding out who you are, and then finding out that who you are is amazing. If that’s not a movie you can fall in love with, I don’t know what is.
Matthew Jackson (@awalrusdarkly) is a pop culture writer and nerd-for-hire whose work has appeared at Syfy Wire, Mental Floss, Looper, Playboy, and Uproxx, among others. He lives in Austin, Texas, and he’s always counting the days until Christmas.
The post Fall In Love With ‘Lisa Frankenstein’ This Valentine’s Day appeared first on Decider.
