Lisa Frankenstein in 300 Words or Less

You know how zombies are wobbly when they first wake up? And then before you know it they're running like the "infected" of 28 Days Later or listening to a Walkman like Bob in Day of the Dead? Lisa Frankenstein, the new horror-comedy written by Jennifer's Body scripter Diablo Cody and directed by Zelda "daughter of Robin" Williams has that shambling ambling sort of feel -- it takes awhile to find its footing but I think it finally does around the film's mid-point, and from thereon I was enamored. Its first half isn't bad -- you're just not really keying into who Lisa (Kathryn Newton, summoning all the Heathers put in a blender) is as a character until she finds her purpose. Her mood-swings and her actions seem kind of random. 

That said those are quibbles that will certainly feel less wobbly on second, third, and thirty-fifth viewings, because Lisa Frankenstein is destined to be a cult movie born and bred. Even while watching it you can tell that this thing will resonate deeply with the same kind of 13-year-olds who kept beating that Heathers drum until that movie became a bonafide classic. (You might not recall that movie was a big flop at the time of its release.) Or, in Cody's exact wheelhouse, a generation later with Jennifer's Body, which was not a success in 2009 but is now well on its way to classic status itself. Lisa Frankenstein, for all its wobbly bits, is funny and charming and sweet and nasty and weird and its hallucinegenic overdone 80s aesthetic is a hoot and Carla Gugino is there killing it and I think the tweens, the right ones anyway, are gonna swoon.