Lisa Frankenstein

Lisa Frankenstein is Diablo Cody's Jennifer's Body with worse reviews and a better aesthetic. That sentence is both a description and a verdict.

Cody's Jennifer's Body (2009) was a horror film about a girl possessed by a demon who ate male victims. Critics dismissed it on release and it was later reclaimed as a feminist cult classic when its target audience grew up and recognized what it was. Lisa Frankenstein follows the same template: misfit female protagonist, supernatural acquisition of power, male targets consumed or dispatched, cathartic empowerment as the film's thesis. The difference is that Jennifer's Body was genuinely sharp and occasionally scary. Lisa Frankenstein is mostly just earnest.

The setup takes place in 1989, and the production design is the film's most reliable pleasure. Director Zelda Williams and cinematographer Paula Huidobro have built a pastel-and-neon vision of a small midwestern town that looks like someone had Stranger Things and Edward Scissorhands playing simultaneously on two screens and then split the difference. The 80s aesthetic is lovingly executed. The film knows what it is going for visually and achieves it.

Kathryn Newton plays Lisa Swallows, a teenage girl still raw from the murder of her mother two years earlier. She has a new stepmother, Janet, who is vain and dismissive. She has a new stepsister, Taffy, who is blonde and popular but secretly kind. She has a crush named Michael who does not notice her and a lab partner named Doug who sexually harasses her. The script frames all of this through a very specific female gaze: the world is full of people who fail Lisa, dismiss Lisa, or actively harm Lisa, and they will pay for it.

The supernatural element arrives when a bolt of lightning resurrects the Victorian man whose grave Lisa has been visiting in the local cemetery. The Creature, played by Cole Sprouse in a purely physical performance, breaks into Lisa's house and she decides to hide him in her closet. He is initially missing body parts, which he recovers over the course of the film by taking them from the people Lisa considers her enemies. This is the film's central mechanism and it is presented as justice.

Doug, who sexually harassed Lisa at a party, loses his hand. Janet, who belittles Lisa relentlessly, is killed and her ear harvested. The film treats both killings as cathartic events scored with period pop songs, which is the clearest possible signal about its ideological priorities. The violence is the point. The violence is feminist liberation.

Cody is a skilled writer and the film has its pleasures. The dialogue is often sharp. Newton and Sprouse develop a credible chemistry despite his muteness. The 1989 period detail is handled with genuine affection rather than algorithmic nostalgia. Carla Gugino commits fully to Janet's cartoonish villainy. When the film is working, it works because the craft is real.

But the ideology is inescapable. This is a film about female rage as a righteous force. The men who harm women are targets. The women who enforce patriarchal standards are accessories to be destroyed. Lisa's transformation from passive victim to empowered killer is the film's arc, and the film wants the audience to celebrate it without complication. The final act asks viewers to fully embrace Lisa and the Creature's partnership in murder, which the film frames as romantic fulfillment. Cody has never been subtle.

From a VirtueVigil perspective, this is a clearly woke film. The feminist revenge framework is the film's primary structural and ideological spine. The 1989 setting is decorative. The Frankenstein allusion is decorative. What the film is actually about is female rage as liberation, male sexual aggression as a death sentence, and the empowerment of outsider girls through violence. It delivers this thesis competently and with craft. But it is undeniably delivering it.

Conservative viewers should be aware of what they are walking into. Lisa Frankenstein is not a nostalgic 80s horror-comedy with incidental feminist elements. It is a feminist horror-comedy that uses 80s nostalgia as packaging. The distinction matters.

Trope	Category	Location	Authenticity
Feminist Revenge Fantasy	WOKE	Entire film - Lisa acquires supernatural power and uses it specifically to kill or injure men who harassed her and the woman who dismissed her; each act of violence scored as liberation	Injected. The Frankenstein myth does not inherently require a feminist revenge structure. Cody and Williams have chosen this framing deliberately. The film's thesis is that female rage is righteous force.
Toxic Masculinity Target	WOKE	Doug's character arc - he sexually harasses Lisa at a party, is presented as deserving of violent punishment, and is mutilated by the Creature; his death is played as audience catharsis	Injected. The film constructs a male character specifically as a target for feminist violence. The sexual harassment is the scripted mechanism that justifies the killing for the intended audience.
Traditional Family as Obstacle	WOKE	Janet and Dale - the stepmother is a villain, the father is useless and enabling; the family structure is the source of Lisa's oppression rather than protection	Genre convention partially. Cinderella-style stepmother stories are ancient. But the Cody script adds a layer of feminist commentary: Janet specifically enforces patriarchal beauty standards and dismisses Lisa's pain. This is ideological injection into a genre frame.
Infallible Youth	WOKE	Lisa is consistently the smartest, most sensitive person in every room; every adult around her is either predatory, useless, or oblivious; her perspective is validated by supernatural events	Genre convention but amplified to ideological level. Cody's script makes every adult institution (the family, the school, the community) a source of harm for Lisa. There is no adult wisdom anywhere in the film.
Vigilante Justice Without Consequences	WOKE	Multiple killings - Lisa and the Creature murder Janet, kill Doug, and potentially others; the film ends without meaningful legal or moral consequence for Lisa	Injected. The consequence-free violence is a deliberate authorial choice. Cody's feminist horror blueprint requires the empowerment narrative to remain uninterrupted by consequence. This is ideological rather than narrative.
Girl Boss (Strong)	WOKE	Lisa's arc throughout - she begins passive and overlooked and ends as the dominant, empowered figure in every relationship; her agency is consistently validated and her aggression celebrated	Injected. The character's empowerment is specifically structured as feminist liberation rather than organic character development.
Romantic Devotion (Unconventional)	TRADITIONAL	Lisa's attachment to the Creature is genuine and singular; she shows up for him, restores him, and protects him; the romantic bond is presented as real love	Authentically romantic within its own framework. The film's one traditional value is its insistence on genuine, devoted romantic attachment. Lisa loves the Creature completely and exclusively. This is unconventional in subject but traditional in structure.
Period Nostalgia (Authentic)	TRADITIONAL	1989 setting throughout - production design, costume, music, and cultural references are handled with evident love and considerable craft	Authentic. The 1989 aesthetic is a genuine production achievement. The film's visual love for the period is real, not algorithmic. This is the one area where the traditional sensibility shows through the feminist packaging.