Lisa Frankenstein feels straight out of the 80s and hits most of the marks along the way but who is this actually for?
We follow Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton), a daughter who sees her mother get murdered and now lives with her dad, new step mom, and preppy step sister. Shes the goth kid who enjoys cemetary and poetry vs her step sister being a preppy popular girl in school. When lightning hits Lisas favorite grave though, the body inside comes back to the life, and in that gives Lisa just what shes been searching for in companionship.
While the story here isn’t anything super new it does have some nice twists in it. While it does start off incredibly slow once the film picks up and our creature joins in the film actually finds itself. While PG-13 the writing here keeps it fresh and clever while still giving us tiny bits of horror and blood in smart ways.
Newton herself though deserves praise for this. While shes been having a consistently great run in horror she fits the role of gothy teenager looking for a friend here perfectly. Sprouse, who says not a word, executes The Creature great as well with his facial expressions doing all that is needed. Liza Soberano as Taffy, Lisa’s well-meaning and popular step-sister, and Carla Gugino as Janet, Lisa’s downright evil stepmother are another two-fer in excellent casting. Soberano is welcoming and straight away a good heart on the screen and generally being so likable and normal in a movie like this stands out in a bad way, but not here. Meanwhile Gugino makes you hate her from the second she appears.
The main thing that hurts this movie, aside from the slow start, is just how out there it is. Its wacky and almost too horror like for teeny bop and too teeny bop for horror lovers. The mixture works though but its just about finding that crowd to love this. This is the perfect example of a movie that will find its crowd in 5-10 years but in the mean time you should watch it first before that crowd finds it.
Score :
3.5 / 5
