Streaming Wars is a weekly opinion column by IGN’s Streaming Editor, Amelia Emberwing. Check out the previous entry, Have You Heard About Our Lord and Savior, Shōgun?
Lisa Frankenstein, the directorial debut of Zelda Williams with a script penned by Diablo Cody, hit theaters in February of this year. There it was met with conflicting reviews by critics (“middling” being the wrong word here, given that the reviews were typically very positive or very negative) and an embarrassing box office cume of $9.9 million throughout its run. A lot of “life” happened in February, so I unfortunately had to miss not one, but two screenings of the film prior to its release (yeah, I was part of the problem). However, now that it’s on digital, I dropped the cash to rent it. I spent a hearty $19.99 to do so, so I recommend just buying a physical copy when it becomes available in July. It will hit Peacock sometime around then as well, if you prefer to stream it first.
When we first learned about Lisa Frankenstein in late 2023, I warned people that the film was about to become my entire personality. I am here to report that I was right and it is great and, like the impeccable and misunderstood Jennifer’s Body before it — which was also a Diablo Cody script, by the way — it deserved better.
I’m sorry, this is the movie that we let Argylle beat at the box office? Lisa Frankenstein was stylish and funny and unapologetically feminine and we let it lose to the movie that made me go viral because it broke me with how absolutely terrible it was? Don’t get me wrong, Lisa Frankenstein only cost $13 million to make, so it lost way less money than the much pricier Argylle, which came with a hefty $200 million price tag. Still, it’s the principle of the matter! I know my indignance is lost in a sea of countless other incredible independent films that were outgrossed by worse, uglier, but ostensibly “bigger” movies, but Lisa Frankenstein is the one we’re talking about today!
Of course, box office isn’t necessarily indicative of quality. Plenty of incredible films have flopped at the box office without reducing their merit as art. What a floundering box office can harm, however, is discoverability. Now here’s hoping Zelda Williams goes on to have the career she deserves and people remember the other times Diablo Cody-penned films were done dirty and Lisa Frankenstein quickly finds its way to the cult classic status it deserves. But, on paper, the movie had all the makings of what should have been a slam dunk for Focus Features and the team behind the film. And yet, it wasn’t.
Stars Katherine Newton and Cole Sprouse have no shortage of fans, with Newton coming from Supernatural — as well as Freaky and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — and Sprouse just off the tail end of a long stint on Riverdale. (RIP, CW Network. We’ll miss you always.) Meanwhile, Diablo Cody comes with plenty of followers thanks to a storied writing career, and we all know who Zelda Williams is! You mean to tell me that people weren’t at least curious about what her directorial debut may look like?! I’m to understand that a bunch of people saw that poppy, neon-drenched trailer and thought “nah”? Was it Frankenstein-fatigue after Poor Things? Did we all just sleep through February?
I could go on about the slow, depressing death of movie theaters likely playing a major role in the soft theatrical run for Lisa Frankenstein. But you’ve read that kind of piece a million times by now and it is, as mentioned, depressing. Besides, I’d rather finish this off with gushing about why it’s worth checking out in hopes that it doesn’t eventually join the growing sea of lost media in the streaming era.
Every inch of Lisa Frankenstein is quirky and nostalgic — a fact that makes me hopeful that Williams and Cody team up again in the future — but it’s also just plain fun. It’s a traditional teen-girl movie wrapped up in a horror-comedy blanket and then cooked in an ’80s tanning bed. There are scenes in this movie that your brain tells you it can smell, from the burning hair all the way to the pounds of Aqua Net hairspray.
Taking me back to cooked-hair memories — full disclosure, I’m only an ’80s baby in the sense that I was born in them, but this unfortunate trend followed us well into the ’90s and ’00s — is impressive, sure, but Lisa Frankenstein’s greatest accomplishment is one shared with most of Cody’s body of work: It is unapologetically, unabashedly female. Not in the Barbie way (which is exceptional), where it explicitly spells out all the things about being a woman that a lot of people still need to hear, but in the way where women’s day-to-day lives are simply treated as normal.
Periods and period products are mentioned repeatedly throughout the film; a douche bag is picked up off the counter (ladies, your body’s pH levels are fine unless your doctor has told you otherwise, people are just trying to sell you shit); a vibrator is casually waved around more than once; the list goes on. None of these play any real role in the plot; they’re just passively there or mentioned as part of a day in the life of a cis female. Even Lisa’s growing interest in sex and sexuality is normalized by her very sex-positive sister, Taffy (Liza Soberano), who in any other story would be the mean, bitchy prep who ruined her step-sister’s life. But not in Lisa Frankenstein! Taffy is preppy, and she’s also kinda mean and ditsy, but she also genuinely loves Lisa and truly wants her to be a part of her family. There’s a whole, y’know, string of murders that eventually comes between them… but their relationship is very cute otherwise!
We’ve been blessed with two Frankenstein riffs in as many years, both of which are aggressively, beautifully, unrepentantly feminine and strange, just as Mary Shelley would have wanted it. Lisa Frankenstein won’t end up anywhere near the Oscars, but it serves just fine as Poor Things’ spunky, sometimes-a-little-messy, little sister. I’m thrilled I finally had the chance to watch it, and I hope you take the time to do so as well! It’s never too late to support great movies (y’know, so long as they don’t get lost to the digital ether).
