There’s a new underrated horror film hitting cinemas this week that just hasn’t been talked about enough – perhaps because it contains a rather gory necrophilia romp.
That movie is Lisa Frankenstein, starring Cole Sprouse and Kathryn Newton. It’s written by the mind behind films like Juno and Jennifer’s Body, Diablo Cody – but sadly it fell flat in its jokey delivery in a way that those flicks never did.
Marketed as a horror comedy, the film follows Lisa Sparrow, a high school student obsessed with visiting the local graveyard and tending a brooding guy’s tombstone. A little backstory – Lisa’s mum was killed by an axe murderer in a brutal attack her daughter witnessed, though beyond a few insults aimed at her, this never impacts the story in any real way.
READ MORE: Hollywood star contracted gonorrhoea from real sex scene – and used payout to fund movie
READ MORE: Click for more brilliant Daily Star showbiz stories
Eventually, Lisa heads to a party where she’s spiked with drugs, and while stumbling home, lightning strikes the tombstone she cares for and brings the corpse inside back to life. Or an approximation of life, at least. There’s enough body horror here to tide any gore fans over – Sprouse’s character (known only as ‘The Creature’) oozes slime from his nostrils, hacks up living bugs and is missing several body parts.
(Image: Focus Features/Michele K Short. All Rights Reserved)
It becomes Lisa’s job to restore his body to its former glory by hacking and slashing at those around her in a pretty random murder spree. Her evil step-mother? Quickly dispatched for the use of her ear. Boy who tried to grope her at a party? Similarly used for a spare hand.
Amid all this is the use of a tanning bed that electrocutes the user, which Lisa and the Creature use to spark life back into the reattached digits. Sooner or later it’s time to find him a penis, carefully chosen from the guy Lisa is crushing on – and who turns out to be a bit of a b*stard.
(Image: Focus Features/Michele K Short. All Rights Reserved)
And then comes the romp. At least three people in my cinema walked right out as soon as Lisa started snogging the Creature – still semi-covered in dirt, with all his rotting parts visible. It’s thankfully a cut to black – or a cut to a sweet monochrome cartoon showing them enjoying true love – but before that, fans were treated to a steamy vibrator scene when Sprouse is even more… dead.
The problem, for me, was the lack of chemistry between the leads. For most of the film, Lisa is lusting over the editor of the student literary journal, Michael Trent. But when he turns out to be a jerk, she’s seemingly forced to reevaluate her life choices and opt for the Creature instead, who has been in love with her from the start. All this because she doesn’t want to die a virgin.
(Image: Focus Features/Michele K Short. All Rights Reserved)
For more of the latest showbiz news from Daily Star, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters here.
The Creature spends 99% of the movie completely unable to speak and forced to communicate in gestures. And while there are a few sweet moments, the so-called ‘happy ever after’ fell flat, in part because of what the characters go through to get there, in part because we have no real idea of the corpse’s personality.
It felt like the movie was trying desperately to be a Heathers knock-off, right down to the crimped hair and 80s setting… and failing. It might just be time for a film adaptation of the West End musical instead – I’d enjoy that a lot more than what Lisa Frankenstein had to offer.
Follow Daily Star on Threads here.
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
