Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

Spooktober Challenge 2025

Premise: It’s the eighties and Lisa is one of the losers at her high school. Her mom died recently-ish, her dad’s married to a woman she hates and she’s now got a step sister that is pretty nice all things considered. Also, she’s got a huge crush on this dude that, probably, doesn’t even know she exists. Also she’s kind into the whole thing about going to graveyards and being very goff and all that, and after one of those visits lightning strikes on one of the graves and boom suddenly we’ve got a zombie! And well this is their love story, more or less. That or a guide on how to assemble a dude from spare parts.
Under 90 minutes? about 10 minutes over the mark.
Do they say the title? you know what, they don’t. I don’t even think they said the word “Frankenstein” even once?

One sentence review: delightfully stupid [laudatory]
Okay, more: So it is a known fact that one of my kryptonites is “dumb characters written well”. Usually the funny thing for me is the contrast with the “white clown” that is not dumb but needs to get on with the dummy to move the plot forward.
I don’t think there’s a single character in this movie with more than two neurons, and this is absolutely a good thing. This movie is dumb and campy as hell, funny, ridiculously over-the-top and has a couple of scenes where I had to pause because I was laughing too hard. Sure sure sometimes it thinks it’s funnier than it really is (… the writer’s Diablo Cody, and she can give you both Jennifer’s Body but also Juno, so…), it could easily be a lot shorter but eeeeeh I’m going to just enjoy the dumb little movie and nod.
A simple way to improve it: Make it shorter. I found Taffy (Lisa’s step-sister) charmingly dumb and I want more of her in this movie.

Trivia about the IMDb trivia:

Taffy says she can’t walk to the nearby party because she’s “wearing jellies.” Jellies are a type of shoe made from clear or glitter-infused PVC plastic, popularized in the 1980’s by the brand Jelly Shoes. Jellies are notorious for causing excessive sweating, blisters, and even cuts to the feet, since plastic does not conform to the shape of the foot and the mold-formed shoes can have sharp edges.

Fun fact about the IMDb trivia: you can always count on at least one Foot Guy to appear and give you a bit too much info about some “fun feet/shoes facts” you never asked for. You can also tell the Foot Guy is kind of breathing heavily and licking his lips while typing that. Ah, IMDb.