Lisa Frankenstein

Grade: D

Zelda Williams makes her feature film directorial debut with Lisa Frankenstein. She has talented genes, as the daughter of Robin Williams, and we can only imagine the unique inside view into comedy and the industry she must have had growing up. She knows her way around a camera, and the movie looks great from a cinematography standpoint. I hope she continues to direct, because she will knock one out of the park one day. Lisa Frankenstein ain’t it.

The movie draws from the old campy 1980s horror comedy. I saw obvious Heathers and Edward Scissorhands influences, but it ultimately ends up being more like the numerous forgotten about Z-grade schlock from that decade – the kind where it would be generous to call it Grindhouse quality. Think Saturday the 14th, The Monster Squad, and you could go down a rabbit hole on IMDb into many such titles you’ve never heard of.

Lisa Swallows has had a rough go as of late. After witnessing her mother’s death-by-axe-murder, her dad remarries quickly, and she’s uprooted to a new town and school in the middle of her senior year. She’s not the most popular girl in school, but reluctantly goes to a party with her stepsister. Her last name becomes apropos when she gulps down a drink that is meant to be sipped, stumbles into an abandoned graveyard, and wishes upon a young man’s grave that she was with him. The corpse takes the wish differently than she meant it, and rises from the dirt to join her.

The creature is played by Cole Sprouse, one of the twins who shared the role of Adam Sandler’s foster son in Big Daddy. I’ve been seeing a lot of him and his brother this past year. He never talks, but is fine with quietly living in Lisa’s closet when she’s not home, and otherwise Depping his way through the performance. He is missing a hand, an ear, and another part teenagers deem necessary for expressing love. Deaths happen. They take forever to be discovered, or nobody cares, or something, but Lisa puts her seamstress skills to work as she sews these newly acquired parts onto the creature. She is invigorated and fueled by her secret relationship with the creature. It causes her to come out of her shell in school, work, and life. There’s a running joke where she’s grossed out every time the creature cries, because apparently his tears smell very bad.

The movie expects us to find so many things funny, but instead, I just thought they were repulsive. 80s references are shoehorned in, with lines like “I can’t walk too far. I’m wearing jellies. They’ll turn my feet into Hamburger Helper.” I didn’t find this volume of blood, guts, vomiting, dirtiness, and severed body parts entertaining, amusing, or anything positive. A few performances are good. Carla Gugino and Liza Soberano as, respectively, stepmom and stepsis have some nice stuff. As Lisa, I thought I recognized Kathryn Newton. She was in The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, which was a Y.A. treatment of Groundhog Day. I noted how much promise she has, and she is really great, and a true bright spot in what’s otherwise a grotesque, lugubrious mess.

Lisa Frankenstein is distasteful, off-putting, unfunny, and a chore to sit through. It doesn’t lean enough into any of its influences, and therefore, it just about fails in every one. I was glad to be done with it, and left feeling sad and dirty. When I wasn’t feeling any of those other emotions, I was at such arm’s length from everything, I was apathetic to the point of boredom to tears. They could screen this at a cemetery if they wanted to stink up the place.

Grade: D