Lisa Frankenstein is the movie my inner teenager desperately needed. It’s a dreamy, campy, neon ode to the goth misfits of the world; the kids who grew up feeling out of step with their contemporaries and found refuge in sad songs and silent films. Director Zelda Williams makes a strong feature debut, balancing the film’s tones and genres to create a horror-comedy gem that is both swooningly romantic and bitingly funny. Writer Diablo Cody likely has another cult classic on her hands, though I hope this film’s audience finds it more quickly than it found her 2009 film Jennifer’s Body. Not every viewer will be on Lisa Frankenstein’s wavelength, but for those who are, it is a kooky, sweet, and hilarious balm for the soul.

The year is 1989, and Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) is a high school senior in a new town. She’s studious and shy, preferring to spend her time sewing, writing poetry, and watching old movies rather than partying or going to football games. If that weren’t enough to make her an outcast, she had to leave her hometown because her mother was murdered by an axe-wielding intruder and her father Dale (Joe Chrest) thought that quickly remarrying and moving to a new place would be best. (“Best for whom?” is a question that Dale prefers to leave unpondered.) Lisa’s stepmother Janet (Carla Gugino) is an aerobicized Lady Tremaine, and Janet’s daughter Taffy (Liza Soberano) is a bubbly cheerleader who gets all of Dale’s praise and attention. When Lisa stumbles home from a party where her drink was spiked, she passes by her favorite grave in the cemetery she frequently visits to get away from the rest of the world, telling the young man buried there that she wishes she were with him in death. Strange green lightning hits the grave, bringing The Creature (Cole Sprouse) to life. He finds Lisa and enlists her aid in replacing his rotted body parts as they begin a charming friendship that blossoms into romance. 

Lisa Frankenstein looks and sounds terrific. Director of photography Paula Huidobro — who lensed the first two seasons of Barry, including the instant classic episode “ronny/lily” — perfectly sets up the contrast between Lisa’s world, with its dreamy shots and moody, beautiful neons, and the suburban world surrounding her, with its prison cell picket fences and faux-cheery pastels. Creative studio Tulips and Chimneys provided the animation, including the title sequence, which offers a cheeky take on Lotte Reiniger (a filmmaker Lisa likely admires, given her taste for early 20th century cinema) and immediately sets the tone for the film. Production designer Mark Worthington and art director Michelle C. Harmon nail the time period (the peachy-pink seashell-style lamps instantly transported me back to childhood), and Isabella Summers’s bittersweet score provides essential ballast for the film’s humor. Music supervisor Garrett McElver puts together the ideal soundtrack for a goth teenager navigating emotional turmoil in 1989, and his use of Jeffrey Osborne’s “On the Wings of Love” is a needle drop for the ages. 

The romantic leads are an absolute delight: Newton and Sprouse have fantastic chemistry, and The Creature’s frustrations with the initially oblivious Lisa make for a bittersweet comedic journey. Newton is hilarious and deadpan in a disarmingly guileless way; her portrayal never loses sight of the fact that Lisa is a teenager, allowing her to be occasionally self-centered and tactless but never losing any of her intelligence or sweetness. Sprouse is immensely talented, and he has a beguiling way of combining heartfelt sincerity with tongue-in-cheek irreverence. His physical comedy is brilliant; his undead form lurches and shudders, and as he gradually regains control of his body over the course of the film, he becomes the charming leading man fans already knew him to be. In a film as electric and joyous as Lisa Frankenstein, it’s hard to say who’s having the most fun among the cast, but with his heartbreaking glances punctuated by hilarious burbles, Sprouse is a strong contender for the title.

As fantastic as the entire cast is, Liza Soberano is the biggest revelation, earning the loudest laughs and hitting the most surprising and rewarding emotional beats. Credit goes, of course, to Cody’s script and the incredible lines she gives Taffy, but Soberano takes those lines in such delightful and surprising directions that she breathes life into a character I can’t stop thinking about. Taffy could have been the stereotypical mean girl stepsister: she’s a beautiful, popular cheerleader in a teen comedy set in the ‘80s. She subverts expectations at every turn, though, imbuing Taffy with compelling warmth and richness. 

The sisterly bond between Lisa and Taffy is such a pleasant surprise. Women are often pitted against one another, especially in the cutthroat world of high school social hierarchies, but Taffy never views Lisa as a rival or a target. She embraces Lisa as a part of her family, and every single one of Soberano’s line readings shines with unexpected kindness, love, intelligence, and humor. Had I written this review a few months ago, I would have described Soberano’s performance as “scene-stealing.” However, Iana Murray’s December 2023 interview with the brilliant Greta Lee changed how I view that particular expression. Murray writes:

Her roles, no matter the size, attract another moniker that Lee bristles at: scene-stealer. “Because for me, that means, like, what am I taking away from someone else?” she says. “And each time in that circumstance, it’s not an accident that it’s a white woman or white person that I’m engaging as a scene-stealer. I’m just doing my job.”

Soberano has been a highly successful actress in the Philippines for years, and her Hollywood debut in Lisa Frankenstein is nothing short of revelatory. But she’s not a scene-stealer; she’s a star.

It’s appropriate that Soberano plays Carla Gugino’s daughter. No matter what size her role is, you can always count on Gugino to give an electrifying performance that stays with you, and her venomous, narcissistic stepmother is no exception. She is perfectly dialed in to the film’s camp sensibilities (with assistance from the pitch-perfect hair and makeup team and Meagan McLaughlin Luster’s glorious costumes), adding a sublime sense of the ridiculous to Janet’s tightly-wound ferocity. Janet is cold and cruel, insulting Lisa at every turn and vowing to have her committed to a psychiatric hospital against her will, but Gugino’s arch performance helps prevent Lisa Frankenstein from veering too far into darkness or tragedy. 

If Gugino is Lisa Frankenstein’s rudder, Soberano is the film’s sails, and their combined magnetism makes for a fascinating family resemblance. It also adds intriguing nuance to a story that is quite literally about building the relationships you want and need in your life. Taffy adores Janet, but in the film’s funniest moment (and the instant I knew Soberano deserved to write her own ticket in Hollywood), Taffy admits that her mother is a bitch. Earlier, she scolds her mom for being too hard on Lisa, and Taffy goes out of her way to make Lisa feel like a part of their family when no one else is willing to make that effort. She may not be “making a man” like Lisa is, but she’s single-handedly trying to build a cohesive, loving family; the parallels between their two stories are the most fascinating and rewarding part of the film. 

Lisa Frankenstein’s characters are all teen movie archetypes that have been knocked slightly askew in their respective orbits; they still inhabit the same shared universe, but they also create their own pocket universes that generate a delightfully daffy tension as they bump up against each other. You have: the heroine, an outcast who’s too cool for the jerks at school who look down their noses at her; the perky stepsister who serves as her foil; the cruel stepmother; the emotionally absent father; the dreamy crush (Henry Eikenberry as Michael Trent, editor of the high school lit mag and proud owner of a truly impressive head of hair); and the overlooked but equally dreamy friend who turns out to be the heroine’s true soulmate. The fact that they all seem to exist in slightly different worlds is a canny depiction of Lisa’s isolation and loneliness. Taffy may try, but no one except The Creature truly understands Lisa, and Lisa is so used to being alone that she can’t even see it at first. 

Plenty of ink has been spilled over Cody’s dialogue since her screenwriting debut in 2007 with Juno. While I am an avowed Jennifer’s Body defender, I think Lisa Frankenstein is my favorite Cody script. It still has Cody’s signature voice, of course. As Lisa’s confidence grows, she begins to dress less like a modest seamstress and more like a hot goth girl (think the inverse of Annie Potts’s Iona from Pretty in Pink). When she borrows Taffy’s top from teen clothing store “Contrampo,” Taffy — ever the supportive sibling — approvingly tells her, “Half the school is headed to boner-town and they don’t even know it yet.” There’s a snappy, winking irreverence to Cody’s lexicon with an adolescent edge that either works for you or it doesn’t, and I have to say that “Contrampo” absolutely worked for me. 

But as I rewatch it and think more about it, what strikes me so much about Lisa Frankenstein is how it handles love and grief with a deft, light touch. Lisa doesn’t talk about her mother much, but she opens up to The Creature about her resistance to the idea that she should move on from her loss: “They kept saying, ‘Time heals all wounds.’ But that’s a lie. Time is the wound. Takes you further and further from that place when you were happy. Makes those good smells go away.” At the risk of trying to turn Lisa’s words into another “What is grief, if not love persevering,” I found the simplicity and honesty of that sentiment highly moving. Lisa is a teenage girl trying to deal with her mother’s death while her father moves on to a replacement wife and daughter, and it’s impossible not to feel for her in those vulnerable moments. 

Another reason I love Cody’s script is that it contains one of the most evocative lines I’ve ever heard in a movie. When Lisa attends the fateful party where her drink is spiked, “nice guy” Doug (Bryce Romero) takes her to a back bedroom, which she thankfully escapes once she realizes what Doug’s intentions are. Before that happens, though, he holds Lisa’s hair back as she vomits, telling her, “Your hair feels like Easter grass.” Those six words perfectly triangulate the era and the phase of life these characters are in. The second Doug said it, I could feel the crunch of the plastic Easter grass and the sticky stiffness of the hair-sprayed curls in my fist. By contrasting the childhood memory of Easter baskets with the adult phenomenon of big, sprayed hair — along with the adolescent awkwardness of thinking a girl would find that observation flattering — that one short line encapsulates the bizarre tension of growing up; the push and pull of puberty, the bittersweet contrasts inherent to “coming of age.” 

Though Lisa Frankenstein wears its influences on its sleeve — films like Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show are clear inspirations, to name just a few — it more than stands on its own as an exciting feature debut for Zelda Williams and a stellar showcase for the talents of its cast and crew. Above all else, this film is a love story. The Creature’s gradual accumulation of new body parts is such a beautiful metaphor for love and growing up. He’s made up of so many different components: past and present; fantasy and reality; memories of people who have hurt Lisa and hopes for people who will finally show her the grace and kindness she deserves. I needed a movie like this when I was growing up, and I needed a movie like this now. Lisa’s act of reconstructing a corpse is about putting herself back together in the wake of a catastrophic loss and finding someone who wants to hand her the bricks as she lays them one by one to build the life she wants. What could be more beautiful than that?