Lisa Frankenstein
The Zelda Williams directed dark comedy, Lisa Frankenstein, is set in 1989 and the movie loves to remind you of this. 80s pop culture, clothing, trends and technology are mentioned so many times, it gets a bit tedious. The film has enough comedy coming from the main plot that I'm not sure why this needed to be added.
The story revolves around the titular Lisa who is living with her father, stepmother and stepsister not long after her mother was brutally murdered in a home invasion. The fact her father remarried so soon is glossed over, especially since the stepmother is a terrible, terrible human being.
Lisa, a loner at her new high school, spends a lot of time at an abandoned cemetery speaking over the grave of a young man who died in the mid nineteenth century. When lightning strikes the grave, the young man, who isn't fully named, rises from the dead, as one does, and searches out Lisa to help reassemble some of the body parts that are missing from his reanimated corpse.
This film takes mutilation and murder, and makes them both satisfying and hilarious. The supernatural aspect makes one suspend their disbelief, but the crimes could happen. What does it say about me that I gleefully applauded some of the more grisly aspects? After Lisa's mother's death, her damaged psyche is not treated with comfort and love, but with a crazy insistence that she should just get over it. My writing always seems to drift into the defense of mental illness, and this is no exception. I suspect that the death of Robin Williams affected Zelda's choices as the director, and I applaud the use of dark satire to get the point across.
The ending of the film didn't quite come together, however. The train wreck, that Lisa and the deceased became, definitely went further off the rails and then came to a screeching halt. I have questions that won't be answered, and I hate it when movies do that. Don't be smarter than me, movie!
This would be a solid 7.5 or 8, but that ending and too many self aware 80s references bumped it down for me. I liked it though; dark humor is a favorite genre of mine.
The Zelda Williams directed dark comedy, Lisa Frankenstein, is set in 1989 and the movie loves to remind you of this. 80s pop culture, clothing, trends and technology are mentioned so many times, it gets a bit tedious. The film has enough comedy coming from the main plot that I'm not sure why this needed to be added.
The story revolves around the titular Lisa who is living with her father, stepmother and stepsister not long after her mother was brutally murdered in a home invasion. The fact her father remarried so soon is glossed over, especially since the stepmother is a terrible, terrible human being.
Lisa, a loner at her new high school, spends a lot of time at an abandoned cemetery speaking over the grave of a young man who died in the mid nineteenth century. When lightning strikes the grave, the young man, who isn't fully named, rises from the dead, as one does, and searches out Lisa to help reassemble some of the body parts that are missing from his reanimated corpse.
This film takes mutilation and murder, and makes them both satisfying and hilarious. The supernatural aspect makes one suspend their disbelief, but the crimes could happen. What does it say about me that I gleefully applauded some of the more grisly aspects? After Lisa's mother's death, her damaged psyche is not treated with comfort and love, but with a crazy insistence that she should just get over it. My writing always seems to drift into the defense of mental illness, and this is no exception. I suspect that the death of Robin Williams affected Zelda's choices as the director, and I applaud the use of dark satire to get the point across.
The ending of the film didn't quite come together, however. The train wreck, that Lisa and the deceased became, definitely went further off the rails and then came to a screeching halt. I have questions that won't be answered, and I hate it when movies do that. Don't be smarter than me, movie!
This would be a solid 7.5 or 8, but that ending and too many self aware 80s references bumped it down for me. I liked it though; dark humor is a favorite genre of mine.