Why I Love Lisa Frankenstein
Down with cynicism! Up with true love!!!!
Happy Valentine’s Day! I love love! I also love movies, and this year, one of my resolutions is to see more movies in the theater. So far I’ve seen Godzilla Minus One (amazing!!!! perfection), Mean Girls (as expected), American Fiction (wonderful! could have watched it forever), and Lisa Frankenstein (let me tell you!).
I saw Lisa Frankenstein this past Friday mostly on a whim.1 But as soon as it started, I was hooked! Delighted! Transfixed! The basic premise: a lonely teen girl (Kathryn Newton) grieves her brutally murdered mother while trying to make her way in a new school, under the watch of an abusive step-mother and a checked-out father. She spends all her free time in an overgrown cemetery talking to a bust of a deceased man (Cole Sprouse). When he rises from the grave, he helps her murder her enemies, and she uses their limbs to repair his decaying body.
The sets and costumes were truly dreamy, and since the movie takes place in the 1980s, the soundtrack was easily pretty great (my boyfriend said at one point, “This movie feels like a music video,” which made sense because we later learned it was directed by Zelda Williams, daughter of Robin Williams, who up until this point had primarily directed music videos). The dialogue was quick and witty, but the highlight of the film was far and away Kathryn Newton’s performance—truly the embodiment of the awkward, witchy teen girl.
Lisa Frankenstein spoofs classic ‘80s and ‘90s cult films—notably Heathers and Edward Scissorhands—as well as Frankenstein and Mary Shelley’s life itself, but it revisits all these stories with a vengeance, defiantly telling them the way they should be told, exclamation point!2 By which I mean, this isn’t a coming-of-age story in the sense that Edward Scissorhands and Heathers are: the protagonist doesn’t really “learn” anything about life—she begins the movie already in a state of suffering, and the whole story is really just her getting what she deserves. An unapologetic fairytale!
I can’t help comparing Lisa Frankenstein to Poor Things—another recent Frankenstein reimagining. While I’d be shocked if Lisa Frankenstein gets the flowers Poor Things did, I really…kind of hated Poor Things. OK, I mostly enjoyed it while I watched it, it was well-made, had some good moments, a good score, and solid acting from Emma Stone—but it just left me feeling hollow in a way that has made me hate it more and more as time passes.
To me, what differentiates Poor Things from Lisa Frankenstein is the level of sincerity put into each film. Maybe Poor Things fans will disagree, but watching that movie, I felt keenly aware of the filmmakers—because it felt like the filmmakers were keenly aware of me. I had the same frustrations with Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid and (to a lesser extent) with Barbie3—in each case, it was a little deflating, even frustrating. None of these movies felt curious enough about their own subject matter, and they left me feeling like I was being watched rather than watching. Comparatively, Lisa Frankenstein feels like it was made by people who were just having fun and who didn’t really care if other people watched it. (Godzilla felt the same, though it’s obviously a wildly different film.)
OK, some real spoilers below.
Just be aware.
You’ll spoil the movie if you read this next paragraph, so skip ahead if you don’t want to do that.
I think I expected Lisa Frankenstein to end badly, or at least to end with the protagonist learning from her mistakes—but, to my delight, it didn’t. It ended exactly as it “should” have: she dies and her corpse husband resurrects her, and they live together (presumably) forever, reading Romantic poetry on benches.
I put “should” in quotation marks because we all know a good ending doesn’t automatically mean a happy one. But why not?
OK, you’re good now.
As I’ve explained to multiple friends who’ve tried to recommend me various drama TV shows and sad movies, the older I get, the less I want something sad or heavy or that ends badly. Some of this is a failing on my part, I know—emotional laziness, maybe? Who knows. (I’ll read whatever, but when it comes to the screen, I’m typically all about wish fulfillment and whimsy.)
But I think we all also know that there’s a dearth of sincerity in art in the last few decades, with artists turning to irony and didacticism and cynicism—or at best, maybe defensive hopefulness?—as creative wellsprings rather than curiosity and exploration. Critics like Scott Meslow, author of From Hollywood with Love: The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy have talked about the death of the rom-com (though he believes, as I do, that it’s coming back). Romance films are generally considered women’s films, so they were always a little doomed—but in the last 20 years, young people seem increasingly suspicious of love. Writer (and my grad school mentor) Eric LeMay wrote an essay for The Harvard Review in 2007 (!!!!) in which he expresses surprise and some consternation at the evolution in his students’ responses to Romeo and Juliet: over the years, more and more students reject claims that Romeo and Juliet are really “in love,” asserting instead that they’re just horny teenagers.
Maybe they're right. Maybe there's much to celebrate about a room full of young people who are aware of the demands love makes, who don't buy the lacy lies we tell on Valentine’s Day or after a hit of ecstasy. Believing love is work is certainly better than believing it's effortless, ceaseless bliss…. Still, I worry my students are missing out on something, something more than just an accurate understanding of the play…. I think Romeo and Juliet show us—in a way no Hallmark card or expert can—what it feels like to be in love.
Sure, there’s room for prudence—for “work,” LeMay quotes his students as repeating—but the notion that we as a society are increasingly going into love stories and relationships with our walls up is a depressing one. I also don’t really think it’s what any of us wants. (The Twilight renaissance that happened during lockdown is evidence of that.)
I said the older I get, the less interested I am in sad movies or movies with unhappy endings—but that’s only part of it, I also just like myself better and am too tired to pretend I don’t love a good solid love story. I’ve been hosting a month-long Twilight rewatch at my house (most) Tuesday evenings, and let me tell you, it’s kept my winter pretty joyous.
My attitude toward romance might also come from the fact that I grew up super shy and super Christian and was a really late bloomer myself. Maybe there’s something of a “youth is wasted on the young” thing happening here too? Who knows? In any case, if there really is a rom-com renaissance, sign me up.
I knew it was written by Diablo Cody, so I was curious about that, but I have to tell you: I just can’t stand seeing the Sprouse kids as adults. They’re literally only like a year younger than me, but for some reason they feel like they never left the Disney channel, which is a feeling I don’t really have about any other Disney child star. Seeing them grown up just feels icky in a way I can’t really describe or even comprehend.
Read Olivia Rutigliano’s essay on LitHub for a more thorough exploration of Lisa Frankenstein as a reimagining of Mary Shelley’s life.
One thing I’ve noticed about Barbie (which I did love btw!!!!) is 1) it is very hard to critique without people shutting you down and 2) a lot of Barbie-lovers’ appreciation seems to stem, yes, from genuine enjoyment of the movie, but also from what they think other people (men, young girls) will learn from the movie. Which is valid, I guess? But it seems like a weird way to appreciate art.