Review of Lisa Frankenstein, directed by Zelda Williams

I have a subscription to my local movie theater chain: AMC Theaters. Which means that for a small price of $25 a month, I can go and watch up to three movies a week, and while I do not do that, I certainly take advantage of my movie opportunities whenever possible.

That said, I kept getting slammed with Lisa Frankenstein trailers for about two months. Sometimes this makes me not want to watch a movie because the trailer is absolute trash, but I absolutely adored the camp vibes appearing in this one. I know some girls my age are obsessed with Cole Sprouse, but he was not the draw here for me.

Gothic girl trying to find love in true camp fashion? Count me in. I took my sister with me to see the movie, as she also has an AMC subscription and goes to the movies with me.

I was pleasantly surprised to see this in a packed theater, although I’m pretty sure only a couple of people got the memo about the dark humor aspects of the movie.

Let’s get into the review!

Lisa Swallows feels like she doesn’t fit in anywhere, but when she makes a new undead friend, she may feel seen.

This film begins with an animated sequence explaining the origins of our male character. Born in the Victorian period, he was a musician who fell in love with a woman. She left him for another man, and then he was killed by lightning and buried in a bachelor’s grave, as he had no one else.

In the modern day, the year is 1989, and Lisa Swallows is not happy. Two years ago, her mother was killed by an axe murderer in front of her, and now, as an angsty teen already, she has to deal with the fact her new stepmother Janet is terrible and a narcissist. Her new stepsister, Taffy, is a cheerleader with way too much pep in her step, which isn’t helping.

To cope, Lisa spends her time in the abandoned cemetery in the woods, where she even has picked out her favorite headstone. She’s convinced by Taffy to go to a party, where she’s given a drink with something in it, and then she’s sexually assaulted by her classmate when she’s not able to understand what’s going on.

Lisa ventures out to the cemetery in this state, and then confesses to the grave of a young Victorian man from 1837. She says she wants to be dead with him, but one could easily interpret this as wanting to be with him romantically. She heads home, but a lightning strike hits the grave when she leaves, resurrecting the man as a zombie in love with her.

When Lisa comes home, Janet yells at her for breaking the mirror, which she had done earlier. She’s left home alone while her family goes out, and the man, known as the Creature, comes to find her. He cannot speak and smells from the grave, and while Lisa panics at first, she starts talking to him and lets him in. He’s also missing multiple body parts, which becomes a plot point later.

She hides him in her closet, and Lisa claims to her family that a burglar broke in. Janet calls her insane and tries to have her sent to the asylum, and the next morning, the creature spits a worm into her food. After the threat of going to an asylum becomes more real, the Creature kills Janet.

He takes her left ear, and Lisa sews it on for him. They both dump her body at a grave in the cemetery, and Lisa figures out that through electrocution and the tanning bed, they can fuse body parts to him. They use it to fuse the ear back on, and this hatches a new plan for them. Somewhere along the way, they get weirdly intimate, but not sexually yet.

Lisa lures Doug, the student who assaulted her, into the woods so they can cut off his right hand and give it to the Creature. The Creature and Lisa begin bonding after this, but the cops are now onto the disappearances of two different people. Taffy starts to unravel and cry a lot because of her mom’s disappearance, but Lisa, with new confidence, tells her everything will be okay.

Somehow, Lisa avoids getting out of being arrested by the cops as a suspect, then goes to the home of her crush. There, she finds Taffy and him in bed, and the Creature, enraged, cuts off her crush’s private parts. He bleeds to death, and Lisa stops him from killing Taffy.

Taffy is traumatized, but Lisa drags her to the cemetery, leaving her in the car with her mother’s rosary. As she runs away screaming, Lisa goes after the Creature. He tells her he loves her, and she fuses her crush’s private parts to him. They get even more intimate after that, and the cops start to close in on them.

She has the Creature kill her with the tanning bed, although it hurts him to do this. We then cut to the final scene, where her father and Taffy come to visit Janet and Lisa’s graves, leaving flowers. The Creature is able to speak, and reads poetry to Lisa, who has been resurrected.

Overall Thoughts

While the plot on this one isn’t exactly considered to be the greatest in my book, I thought the camp vibes made up for it in the end. There are some really great dark comedy jokes scattered throughout this, and it was very entertaining.

My sister didn’t like the move as much, as that’s not to her taste. Not a lot of other people I was in with were also laughing, which was interesting to me. Maybe the branding wasn’t right for the demographic it needed.

That said, I loved this. I’m here for all of these movies that are camp and vaguely reminiscent of the nineties movies I love in the dark comedy vein.

Go watch it if you haven’t already!

Follow me below on Instagram and Goodreads for more.