General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Lisa Frankenstein

Lisa Frankenstein is a 2024 American romantic horror comedy directed by Zelda Williams, in her feature-length directorial debut, from a screenplay by Academy Award winner Diablo Cody. It stars Kathryn Newton as Lisa Swallows, a misunderstood 1989 teenager who accidentally reanimates a handsome Victorian-era corpse (Cole Sprouse) during a lightning storm, and the two embark on a murderous journey to find love, happiness, and a few missing body parts.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	February 9, 2024, Focus Features (United States), Universal Pictures (international)³
Director / writer	Zelda Williams (feature directorial debut); Diablo Cody¹
Cast	Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse, Liza Soberano, Henry Eikenberry, Carla Gugino, Joe Chrest⁴
Setting	1989; a high schooler rebuilds a reanimated Victorian corpse using a broken tanning bed in her garage¹
Rating / runtime	PG-13 for violent content, bloody images, sexual material, language, sexual assault, teen drinking and drug content; 101 minutes⁴
Box office	$3.8 million opening weekend; $9.9 million worldwide against a reported $13 million budget³^•⁵
Reception	52% on Rotten Tomatoes (210 reviews), Metacritic 47, CinemaScore B³

Spoilers

Plot and themes

Set in 1989, the film follows Lisa Swallows, an unpopular goth-leaning high schooler who visits a cemetery and accidentally resurrects a Victorian-era corpse during a lightning storm. She rebuilds him with her garage's broken tanning bed and replaces his missing parts, an ear, a hand, and a penis, with appendages taken with an axe from people who have wronged her, dumping the mutilated corpses in Bachelors' Grove Cemetery, from which the Creature was reborn.¹^•¹⁰

The title character's surname is Swallows, not Frankenstein; the BFI's Anton Bitel reads "Frankenstein" as implied to be the Creature's surname, and the film as a reimagining of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel rather than a direct adaptation. Bitel also notes the film's suggestion that the Creature may be less a flesh-and-blood being than an imagined composite of Lisa's desires and neuroses: only Lisa sees him, he is kept hidden in her closet, and his weapon of choice is the same type of axe that killed Lisa's mother.¹⁰ By the end, the arc runs in opposite directions for the pair: Lisa becomes unhinged and murderous while the Creature grows more human and compassionate.¹¹

The film sits in a lineage of 1980s-set touchstones that critics and its makers have named, including Heathers, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Young Frankenstein, and Weird Science.¹⁰^•¹² AP reported that it is set in the same universe as Jennifer's Body, Cody's 2009 horror film, which underperformed on release but gained a cult following in the years after.⁵

Production

Focus Features announced the project in June 2022, casting Kathryn Newton (Big Little Lies, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania) and Cole Sprouse (Riverdale, Moonshot) with Zelda Williams directing and Diablo Cody writing. Cody produced alongside Mason Novick through his MXN Entertainment banner, reuniting the pair who had previously collaborated on Tully, Young Adult, Jennifer's Body, and Juno, for which Cody won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Jeffrey Lampert served as executive producer.¹

Cody developed the screenplay during the 2020 pandemic lockdowns. She had long been interested in the Frankenstein myth and wanted to tell it from a female perspective, citing John Hughes's Weird Science (1985), in which two boys create their ideal woman, as a formative influence: she asked herself what the other side of that premise would look like.⁶ Williams said she accepted the script within a day of receiving it, citing her upbringing on Beetlejuice, Young Frankenstein, and Frankenhooker, and that she valued the film's tonal mashup of violence, camp, and love.⁷

The Creature. Sprouse plays a mute 19th-century corpse, credited only as the Creature, who communicates in grunts and gestures. He sat for five hours of prosthetics daily and worked with movement coach Lorin Eric Salm, founder of Los Angeles's Mime Theatre Studio, to build a physical vocabulary for the character. Salm and Sprouse charted the Creature's emotional range and gave him distinct versions of his walk to mark his evolution from monster toward something more human over the course of the film.⁸

Rating. Cody wanted the film rated R and an R-rated cut was shot, including footage of a flying prosthetic penis that Williams removed. Cody lost the argument over a scene in which Lisa sews a severed hand onto the Creature, and the film was released with a PG-13 rating; Cody later said she was glad the wider audience could see it.⁹

Release and box office

Focus Features released the film in 3,144 North American locations on February 9, 2024, a slow Super Bowl weekend. It earned $3.8 million in its first three days according to studio estimates, debuting in second place behind Argylle, and finished with $9.8 million domestically and $9.9 million worldwide against a reported $13 million production budget.⁵^•³ Exit data showed the audience was 61 percent female and 71 percent under age 35.⁵

Reception

Reviews were mixed to negative. The film scored 52 percent on Rotten Tomatoes across 210 reviews, 47 on Metacritic, and a B CinemaScore from opening-night audiences.³ AP's Mark Kennedy gave it zero stars out of four, calling it "stitched together from previous movies, painfully incoherent and deeply, deeply dumb" while praising the leads' comic efforts.¹¹ Tomris Laffly's review at RogerEbert.com found the film fell short as comedy, coming-of-age story, and love story alike, blaming a timid script and flat visuals despite Newton's performance and the magenta-heavy production design.¹³ The Irish Times judged it just about fun enough to sustain its 101 minutes, and noted familial tendrils with Cody's Jennifer's Body screenplay while finding this film rougher, broader, and gnarlier.¹⁴ Several reviewers, including the RTE review, questioned whether the film lived up to its billing as a feminist take on the Frankenstein story, pointing to its treatment of the female characters around Lisa.¹⁵

Commentary around the release repeatedly drew the comparison with Jennifer's Body, which flopped in 2009 before being reappraised as a cult favorite, and some critics speculated that Lisa Frankenstein might follow a similar path.⁵^•¹⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Horror films (individual works) › Comedy horror films › 2020s comedy horror films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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