
“Lisa Frankenstein” is a horror/comedy directed by Zelda Williams and written by Diablo Cody of “Jennifer’s Body” fame. Although the film is extremely stylish and has great cinematography with some great acting, it does not hold the candle to Cody’s previous works. The main character is just fundamentally not very likable, the scenes change so fast one might suffer from a dislocation of the neck, and with all the nods to other films so much better than this one, the viewer constantly remembers that they should rather be watching something else.
Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) is an outcast in her high school, bullied by her classmates due to her g other tendencies; her relationship puts them off more than it endeared her to them. After a gruesome ax murder committed by a masked lunatic on her mother, the Swallows family quickly grows as her father, a grumpy lonely widower, remarries. This leads to the addition of dumbstep–sister Taffy, portrayed by Liza Soberano who, to be fair, is the standout in this movie, and a wicked stepmom Janet, played in the most over-the-top manner by Carla Gugino.
Lisa deals with the many troubles of becoming a young woman; the awkwardness of familial relations, making her crush fall for her and finding a new clique in her new school, until the Creature (Cole Sprouse), the reincarnation of a Victorian era bachelor pianist, unexpectedly enters her life. However, with the appearance of her first real friend, Lisa’s priorities empezar take frenzied turns to returning at least the ‘Golem’ the corpse, who doesn’t have an ear, a hand, and a subdermal component which is not shown until the last fifteen minutes (but will not be shocking to anybody who has bothered to look at the PG-13 rating of this film) back into some form of functional being. She embarks on a quest for these missing parts and in the process, falls deeper in love with the Creature.
When the credits finish rolling in black and white, the movie’s best quality starts to take the stage: its visual artistic qualities. The cinematography is very well crafted, interesting lighting is used, and the camera is handled artistically. The set design boasts a convincing depth, as many details create the effect of the places being inhabited. Certainly, the visuals of this movie are very Joislan and Ioian; its frames are literally dripping with vaporwave colors and thick geometric designs. The aesthetics have accompanied the new age philosophy and concepts which some viewers might consider too much but I regard it as one of the movie’s strongest points.
The aesthetics are there but “Lisa Frankenstein’’ has does not own up to the substance. The storyline orientates itself purposefully on derivative art as being a rage coming of age story in between Carrie and Teeth. What has come out at the end, however, does not even try to beat everything that came before or to deliver something interesting otherwise to fill its duration. The comedy has been thrown to the graveyard and so has the horror, as the tone swings like a pendulum between the two, struggling to forge a genre where both elements mesh. I doubt the creature could count on all four of his remaining fingers the times I chuckled, and I felt \”horror\” only from disgust, not fear.
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