I had high hopes for Lisa Frankenstein for many reasons and it is unfortunately so that for all it does have to offer from time to time, overall the film ends up feeling messy, flat and uneven. I was firstly excited to have the wonderful writer Diablo Cody of Young Adult and Juno fame to return to the world of horror following her now iconic script for Jennifer’s Body, following on from that the conceit sounded fun and interesting with a female twist on Weird Science shot through a nostalgic lens, and on top of all that was Kathryn Newton in the lead who I really do think is one of our stronger actresses currently working, who manages to always bring in many of her now verified scream queen turns a level of star quality – but in each case in the hands of Zelda Williams for her directorial debut, we do get the messy and uneven and often lacklustre film I have already eluded to.

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Zelda Williams for her feature film debut is working with so many aces in her deck, or at least on paper she is. For as much as Cody is a stellar screenwriter without doubt, this is not her finest work at all. It is a messy script that has the outline of something fun in in its bones, but overall is simply far too loose and at times shabby in its structuring and in Williams hands far too shabby in its presentation. I take no joy in denigrating a directors first feature film, but this film is I feel largely such a messy failure due to the direction. Tone, pace and the films overall humour is so mismatched from page to screen and the actors too are seemingly in different films with nobody knowing exactly it seems where to draw the line of camp and where to be serious. The overall editing of the film of Brad Turner just feels so stitched together and as I’ll illuminate in my Post-script I do think there could be a reason for that, but I’m not actually sure what is interference and what is just bad film-making. The film does boast an ensemble who are for the most part all giving it their all it has to be said. Newton is on her normal scream queen high level, but the character is nowhere near as strong as her turn in Freaky and so the switches and shifts don’t work for me here. Liza Soberano is the true standout who manages to make a trope of a character into something incredibly humane and interesting to watch. Carla Gugino and Joe Chrest make up the rest of Lisa’s family and both do great work in completely different registers, Gugino in particular manages to take this film to a height of camp that the entire film should have been more in tune with to be more successful. Dylan Sprouse as the voiceless monster is fun and does fine movement work, but does at times feel a bit more like someone dressing up, than an actual monster. There is a joy to the film for the most part that does rub off in certain stretches, but overall is just far too uneven in quality to reach the heights that on paper it most certainly could have.

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A 4/10 with so much promise that it loses unfair points for feeling so disappointing in final product. From a very early stage in the film, something just feels slightly off with Williams handle on tone and pace and the errors just continue to show from there. Cody’s script is by no means her strongest and has so many red herrings and false leads that come to nothing that it feels almost first drafty to be honest. Newton does a valiant job as our lead, but the character on the page and ultimately in performance does feel like a bizarre mismatch of different tropes that are in no way bolstered by a strong enough film to justify it as an arc. Ensemble highlights are common, but overall Lisa Frankenstein feels like a messy but at times fleetingly fun first attempt at something. What that something is I’m not exactly sure.

P.S Was this film an editing situation? With the animated sequences and the choices of how to depict later events rather bloodless, this supremely feels like a film that was edited into something more releasable to a younger audience? The issue is that the rest of the film feels so similarly uneven that I can’t pinpoint whether or not this is purely poor filmmaking or studio mishandling.

SPOLIER P.S. So the murder of Lisa’s mother was not done by Carla Gugino’s character? Surely that was something that was floated? If not then why have it at all? Could have been a cliché, but better a cliché with a stellar turn from Gugino than have nothing there at all.

-        Thomas Carruthers