Director: Zelda Williams (USA). Year of release: 2024
1989. Or maybe 150 years before. Black silhouettes make their way across a pure white background, doing the things that one does in a nineteenth century Gothic novel. A man and a woman dance, The man sits down and plays the piano. Eventually he is struck by lightning and dies, maybe of a consumption-related condition. As the camera pans back. we see his gravestone behind the wrought iron gates of the Bachelor’s Grove cemetery.
As the end titles roll, and the film moves into colour, we’re still in Bachelor’s Grove. Now, we are with Lisa Swallows, who is hanging round the grave of the man who we have presumably already seen in silhouette form. Lisa is a Goth in every way except the black hair and white facepaint. She wears smudged lipstick and has a poster of Bauhaus up in her room next to portraits which she’s presumably sketched herself. She spends lots of time on her own listening to LPs by the Cure.
Lisa is struggling to fit in at her new school, which she’s moved to after watching the brutal axe murder of her mother. She is a sensitive soul who has her radio tuned to a station “for people like us”. Although the band we hear – The Chameleons – only had a passing relationship with Goth (could the film makers not get the rights to Bela Lugosi’s Dead?), any film soundtrack which includes this severely underrated band is ok with me.
Then again, the film’s music choice is, shall we say, a little all over the place. For most of the time, it tries to keep a 1980s Indie vibe – as well as The Chameleons, we hear Echo and the Bunnymen, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and Pixies. But the film’s musical set piece has Newton singing a sentimental song by REO Speedwagon of all people. Maybe I missed that week at Indie School, but I certainly don’t remember The Speedwagon ever being part of the syllabus.
Since her mother’s death, Lisa has inherited the perky Taffy as step-sister. Taffy is a cheerleader, a Miss Hawaiian Tropic winner and someone who mixes in all the right circles. She comes with a mother, Lisa’s evil stepmother, who Lisa always addresses as Janet. Janet is a psychiatric nurse, who is part Nurse Ratched, part out-take from one of the more mainstream John Waters films. Janet regularly threatens to section her step-daughter for not conforming to her own rigid ideals.
Lisa is in love with Michael Trent, the pseudy editor of the school arts magazine which occasionally publishes her poetry. Trent wears a studded leather jacket, a Nietzsche t-shirt and an embarrassing floppy fringe. At a party, instead of handing out beers like a normal person, he offers “ethanol” (by which he means beers). Michael tells Lisa that her poetry reminds him of Sylvia Plath and early Anne Sexton, and she is smitten enough to believe that he is not taking the piss or just showing off.
In the early scenes, Kathryn Newton gets Lisa just right – an awkward gawky teenager with her eyes permanently fixed on the ground, unable to make small talk or even finish a sentence. Lisa reluctantly accompanies Taffy to a party, where Michael offers her a spiked drink and another party guest makes an inappropriate advance. Lisa ends up at the cemetery, telling God that she wished she were with the man at whose gravestone she is currently weeping.
There follows a little shenanigans with a thunder storm and a malfunctioning sun bed. Lisa’s family has gone out, so she’s home alone. Hearing a noise downstairs, she comes face-to-face with the 19th Century pianist. Turns out that God is a bit slow on the uptake – while Lisa was asking for eternal death, He has resurrected a man whose ear and hand have fallen off in the grave. Sometimes you really need to read the terms and conditions before you say your prayers.
The unnamed Creature is unable to speak, which somehow provokes the previously inarticulate Lisa to come out of her shell. She starts to dress more fashionably, and decides that she is not going to die a virgin. In fact, she’ll go to Michael’s house and rectify that immediately. In her room, she explains her plans to her new friend, who looks on aghast as he’s obviously developing feelings for her. But, unable to speak, he looks on in misery, as a Gothic romantic lead should.
Lisa hides her new friend in her wardrobe which is fronted by a picture that you’ll either recognise from Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon or the Smashing Pumpkins’ Tonight Tonight video, depending on how pretentious or old you are. He and Lisa resolve his missing appendages problem by indulging on a killing spree and hacking off their victims’ limbs. Lisa then sews them onto the Creature’s body, then improvises plastic surgery by using the faulty sunbed to cauterise them.
Lisa Frankenstein aspires towards the subversive charm of Heathers, but it lacks both ambition and depth, and the jokes are either not funny or we’ve heard them before (one is lifted straight from Young Frankenstein). The film is ok, but it’s just too shallow. Those critics who see it homage to the genius of Mary Shelley need a certain sleight of hand to ignore the vast gulf between the writing skills of the creators of this lazy film and those of one of our greatest writers.
Apparently director Zelda Williams is the daughter of Robin Williams, and she isn’t a NEPO baby, oh no! It’s just a coincidence that this film by a director with limited obvious talent was greenlit. Nothing against Williams, who is probably a lovely person, but her assumption that everyone lives in a huge mansion does reflect a certain mindset. This is not a film which mocks the rich, but cannot imagine that there is any other way to live.
Lisa Frankenstein might work for a Young Adult audience, for whom Tim Burton is a little too adventurous. It is likeable enough, and does contain one good joke. Not the film of the year, but neither is it embarrassingly bad.
CinePhil 