Studio: Universal Pictures
Release Date: 4/9/2024
Rating: PG-13
Film Grade: D+
The Story: After witnessing her mother being murdered by a masked home intruder, Lisa resumes life as a mostly silent, awkward high school student who likes to spend her free time in a local cemetery, enamored with fantasies of one of the dead residents.
After accidentally ingesting PCP at a house party, she makes her way home via the cemetery, where she stops at the grave expressing her desire to be with the entombed stranger before finally making it home and collapsing in her bed. But fate intervenes, lightning strikes the grave, reanimating the corpse within.
My Take: Marketed as a horror/comedy it doesn’t manage to either frighten or create chuckles. There’s absolutely nothing scary about it. The jokes are broad, obvious, and largely land flat. There are a few lines of dialog that are mildly amusing, emphasis on mildly, but the story is both shallow and callous. Characters are two-dimensional caricatures, mostly unrelatable and hard to sympathize with.
Stylistically, there are some nice touches. There is some interesting animation at the start and end of the movie and a hallucination sequence that feels like a discount version of a Tim Burton movie. Set in the late 1980s, sets are painted with the ubiquitous pastel pinks and blue hues scene in so much of the entertainment at that time. But it all feels like a thin, artificial veneer that doesn’t manage to take the audience back to that era.
The acting is mostly campy, with Carla Gugino hamming it up as Lisa’s vain and self-centered stepmother. Joe Chrest plays the stereotypically clueless beta father. Liza Soberano is Lisa’s ditzy, cheerleading stepsister, who tries to add a little sympathetic touch to the character. Kathryn Newton does what she can to add some charm to the character of Lisa, but she’s hampered by a script that robs the role of any nuance, going for broad strokes instead of depth. One can’t help but be reminded of Johnny Depp’s performances when watching Cole Sprouse as The Creature, drawing another comparison to Burton’s earlier features.
Video: The early animation sequence shows some odd sparkling and shimmering noise that is absent in the rest of the movie. Colors are vivid and striking, as one would expect for the time period. Dark scenes are clear and sharp. Textures are well represented. The few elements of gore come across on the hokey side, fitting with the unserious nature of the film. This is an example of baseline average for the movies we’re seeing today.
Audio: The disc features a simple DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix, ditching the Atmos version found on the digital download and on demand versions. There isn’t much bass to be found, the songs sound good, but it’s light on environmental effects and spatial cues. There’s not much that stands out here, not even in the line of jump scares, which are to be expected in such a feature.
Special Features: - Deleted Scenes
- Gag Reel
- An Electric Connection
- Resurrecting the '80s
- A Dark Comedy Duo
- Feature Commentary with director Zelda Williams
Final Verdict: While this sure looked like it could be a zany and irreverent take on the Frankenstein tale, it ends up being an irrelevant and inept miss. Nods to Tim Burton’s stylings only make it apparent at how light this movie is in imagination, design, and execution.
It’s hard to guess who this movie was made for. Horror fans won’t find anything worth watching. Written by Diablo Cody, the script feels like a half-hearted panache to Burton’s work, but only on the most superficial of levels. The pacing is off and slow, like a second-rate comedian waiting for the audience to catch up with jokes that aren’t half as clever as he thinks they are. Sequences that should be rapid fire stumble along like the undead title creature, often tripping over the clunky dialog.
It's tough to even recommend this as a curiosity, but I’m sure that there’s someone out there that could enjoy it. Maybe it’s a good fit for the easily amused, stoner community?
Fun Fact: Cody has stated that this movie takes place in the same universe as her earlier film, Jennifer’s Body.
My Review System:JVC DLA-RS3100 4K Ultra High-Definition Front Projector
Elite Screens Sable Frame B2 117” Width with Infinitely Variable Height
Monolith by Monoprice HTP-1 16 Channel Processor with Dirac Live
Monolith by Monoprice 7x200 Watts Amp
Monolith by Monoprice 3x200 Watts + 6x100 Watts Amp
JBL Studio 590 for Left, Center, Right, Wides, and Rears
JBL Studio 580 for Side Surrounds
JBL Studio SCS 8 for Tops
JTR Captivator 1400 Subwoofer X 4
Panasonic DP-UB420 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Player
Oppo BDP-93
NVIDIA Shield Android TV - 4K
Xbox One X
HTPC Running madVR (work in progress)
Remote: URC MX-780
Mini DSP 2X4 HD controlling all subwoofers
APC S15 Power Conditioner with Battery Backup
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