Movie review by Greg Carlson

Surely one of the year’s unlikeliest and most wondrous theatrical experiences, “Sasquatch Sunset,” from beloved indie storytellers David and Nathan Zellner, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to a range of critical responses that match the breadth of the film’s own expansive agenda. Following a quartet of hairy hominids – of the familiar bipedal cryptid sort that has fueled legends of Bigfoot and Yeti in cultures around the world – the movie communicates every one of its concerns without a single spoken word. Chapters divide the action into the four seasons, and “Sasquatch Sunset,” as implied by its title, tackles ideas large and small under the impending twilight signaled by encroaching humans.

Costumed in shaggy, anatomically-detailed bodysuits and stunning foam latex prosthetics by veteran effects designer Steve Newburn, the principal creatures are played by Riley Keough, Jesse Eisenberg, Christophe Zajac-Denek, and Nathan Zellner. Each member of the ensemble commits fully to the enterprise, conveying a wholly believable authenticity by balancing vocalized grunts, hoots and physical movements with astonishingly expressive and soulful performing done with the eyes. Personalities emerge, and with them viewers discover the recognizably human in the group’s relational dynamics. As the only female in the unit, Keough differentiates herself by teaching us much about the unique challenges of maternity.

The intensity of the movie’s environmental message slowly but surely increases throughout the duration of the 89 minute running time. The Zellner brothers, who screened the short “Sasquatch Birth Journal 2” at Sundance in 2011 (the contents of which effectively get remade in one of the feature’s tour de force sequences), don’t limit the action to a single theme, and alongside the warnings about consuming and/or mishandling natural resources and the endangerment of species glows a dazzling rainbow of experiences: alarms signaled by rhythmic beating of sticks, shelters built from leafy branches, mushrooms tasted with dire results, sexual intercourse by turns accepted and rebuffed, encounters with other forest-dwelling animals, and more.

The recognition of the boundaries between the unspoiled, primeval range and the presence of modern humans results in some of the film’s most outrageous and hysterical gags as well as some tragic and startling outcomes. The Zellners indulge an absolutely giddy sense of humor that launches a larger than average number of laugh-out-loud moments in scene after scene. Unimaginative killjoys, complaining that behaviors involving urine and feces are merely “gross,” miss the bigger picture. “Sasquatch Sunset” acknowledges the sense of smell so consistently one can practically taste both inviting fragrance and tangy stench.

In “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Stanley Kubrick distilled “The Dawn of Man” to a single moment of emerging consciousness via tool use, as Dan Richter’s Moonwatcher weaponizes a bone against rival One Ear. “Sasquatch Sunset” is, in many satisfying ways that imbue the movie with its magnetic pull, “The Dawn of Man” inflection point staged again and again. The best of these signposts is performed by Zajac-Denek, whose Sasquatch externalizes a previously internal kind of conversation or thought process by using his hand, in the manner of Señor Wences and Johnny, to anticipate both a sense of self and the separation of the mind and the body.

In true Zellner fashion, it’s a note simultaneously funny and profound.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Documentarian Lance Oppenheim’s “Spermworld” boasts a killer hook to attract the curious: unregulated sperm donors who use social media to offer services to women unhappy with the options provided by traditional “banks.” The filmmaker’s latest feature was inspired by the 2021 “New York Times” article by Nellie Bowles titled “The Sperm Kings Have a Problem: Too Much Demand.” Using a range of techniques that often mirror the way dramatic scenes in fiction films are constructed and cut, Oppenheim introduces viewers to a colorful gallery of characters who, to paraphrase the famous sentiment from Jean Renoir, have their own reasons.

While the first scene in the movie shows a couple preparing to engage in N.I. (natural insemination) through sexual intercourse, the majority of the film’s subjects practice the “artificial” variety requiring fresh and “unquarantined” semen collected in a cup. “Spermworld” is never particularly graphic, but the movie includes several instances in which sperm donors withdraw to the privacy of a bathroom to prepare a specimen, frequently with the aid of stimulating pornography. Oppenheim definitely alludes to the possibility that a selection of men, regardless of the method used, receive some kind of erotically charged pleasure from the transaction.

“Spermworld” tracks a principal trio of donors. Tyree Kelly accepts money for his sperm even as he and his own partner, Atasha Pena Clay, unsuccessfully try to conceive. Mathematics lecturer Ari Nagel, to the great dismay of his mother, lays claim to more than 135 children (and counting). Steve Walker, a lonely sexagenarian relatively new to the donation community, bonds with Rachel Stanley, a young woman seeking to become a mother despite the increasing challenges of her cystic fibrosis. Their stories unfold with a strong sense of cinematic flair that purists may find blurry, as lighting, color and composition combine in artful and stylized mise en scene.

While some detractors have claimed that Oppenheim’s narrative approach negatively criticizes the participants – or at least implies some kind of moral superiority – the director paints complex portraits of people whose desire and willingness to do something outside the gates of typical social convention raise questions for those viewers who might never consider, or need to consider, such a path. Oppenheim has spoken on the record that he tries “to not express any kind of judgment.” The result raises many unanswered questions that some watchers will tolerate. Others may be left wanting information the director is not willing to include.

One of the big themes that looms large and lingers in one’s mind long after the end credits roll is the thin line between altruism and a more self-centered worldview held by donors. As producer Kathleen Lingo said to Nicole Karlis in “Salon,” “One of the things I find so fascinating about this story is the women taking a thing that’s always been mediated through culture, through law, through society — which is who can impregnate them — and taking matters into their own hands. On one side that’s very freeing and empowering, but on the other side, when you decide to go outside the system, there are no rules.” In this sense, “Spermworld” is a worthwhile starting point for a larger and deeper conversation.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Nobody will mistake director Thea Sharrock’s undercooked “Wicked Little Letters” for Henri-Georges Clouzot’s 1943 “Le Corbeau.” Or, for that matter, Otto Preminger’s “Le Corbeau” remake “The 13th Letter” (1951). The poison pen concept has fueled many film plots, and this latest iteration at least has the good sense (or fortune) to feature first-rate performances by Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman, along with a sturdy supporting cast. In 2021, Buckley and Colman played younger and older versions of the same character in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s adaptation of “The Lost Daughter.” Here, they are next door neighbors whose lives are upended by epistolary scandal.

Based loosely on the true events detailed in historian Christopher Hilliard’s 2017 book “The Littlehampton Libels: A Miscarriage of Justice and a Mystery About Words in 1920s England,” Sharrock’s movie condenses four criminal trials into a single courtroom showdown and a more streamlined melodrama that surely would have worked better as an incisive character study of either Colman’s put-upon, two-faced goody-goody Edith Swan or Buckley’s fire-breathing single mom Rose Gooding. Hilliard’s interest in the curious ways that working class people used profanity and the written English language at a time when “universal literacy was still a novelty” isn’t fully captured in the movie.

Regardless, “Wicked Little Letters” remains mostly enjoyable. But the conflict that drives the plot – a series of anonymous, handwritten notes charged with colorful expletives and sent through the post in a time when this would be taken very seriously – isn’t meaty enough to draw undivided attention from the viewer. Sharrock uses the period setting to comment on race and gender-based discrimination and suffocating patriarchal injustices, illuminated most directly via Gladys Moss, the suffering constable played by Anjana Vasan. The decision to reveal the “mystery” to the privileged viewer should be accompanied by a more thoughtful examination of Swan’s compulsion as well as the complicated relationship between Swan and Gooding.

Instead, Moss spends time cooking up an elaborate trap to incontrovertibly prove Gooding’s innocence despite the audience being miles ahead. We are left to imagine why Swan would threaten the freedom of Gooding beyond the breadcrumb trail left by the overbearing presence of Edith’s cruel father Edward (Timothy Spall). If Edith is using the letters to break free from or act out against Edward’s iron grip, perhaps to assert herself in the manner modeled by the candid and unapologetic Rose, Sharrock won’t say. Is Edith jealous of Rose’s independence and sexual liberty? Even if the answer is yes, the movie cannot account for Edith’s inhumanity beyond a near-fainting spell before the bench that implies she doesn’t have it all together.

The foul embarrassments, which include fun combinations like “foxy-ass old whore” and “aging, fucking, soft-cock streaks of hot horse piss,” are sure to get a rise out of any pious patrons and genteel ticket-buyers drawn in by a trailer promising such shocking verbal transgressions. Those epithets, along with gems like “piss-country old stinker with shit hair,” conjure smiles but cannot quite make up for the lack of development or understanding that fails to materialize between the two central figures. A more considered exploration of friendship, to the extent it could and did develop between these two seemingly opposite women, slips away.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

In Sundance standout “Love Lies Bleeding,” filmmaker Rose Glass improves on all the promises announced in her 2021 debut “Saint Maud.” While “Maud” explored the familiar territory of the psychological horror thriller, “Love Lies Bleeding” mines the fertile grit of the neo-noir. Working with a cast of well-known performers, Glass fashions the story of a menacing criminal’s daughter and her desperate romance with a musclebound bodybuilder into a twisted and captivating diagram of malefaction and malfeasance. By the time the clock runs out, genre fans will be itching to revisit “Bound,” “The Hot Spot,” “Blood Simple,” “Blue Velvet” and other like-minded midnight misdeeds.

Had the screenplay, which Glass co-wrote with Weronika Tofilska, been originally conceived as a novel, one could easily imagine it being published by Donald Ellis and Barry Gifford’s Black Lizard imprint alongside classics by Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford and Charles Williams during the late 1980s series heyday. Perhaps the film’s 1989 setting is no coincidence. Willy Vlautin’s comment that the Black Lizard books “were about psychologically damaged people trying to navigate a cruel, cutthroat world that didn’t want them in the first place” perfectly fits Kristen Stewart’s frustrated gym manager Lou and the other characters in her increasingly unbalanced orbit.

Once Lou catches a glimpse of Jackie’s (Katy O’Brian) ripped physique, the humiliation of unclogging toilets gives way to something a little closer to hope, or at least lust. Noir is built on the crescendo of really bad choices, and Lou’s suggestion that Jackie inject performance-enhancing steroids to give her an edge in an upcoming Las Vegas competition is just the first taste of questionable decision-making that will spiral out of control. One of the movie’s sublime pleasures is watching Jackie “Hulk out,” veins popping and biceps glistening, en route to doing things that can’t be undone. Together, Stewart and O’Brian sweat out a pulse-quickening escalation of codependency.

In many a terrific noir, it’s a family affair that forecasts the giant screw-up leading to a bloody, extended showdown. Turns out, Lou is no stranger to body disposal, even if she’s worked hard to wriggle out from under the terrifying shadow cast by her pop Lou Sr. (Ed Harris, relishing the steely hair extensions that frame the deep lines of a gaunt, corpse-like visage). Sister Beth (Jena Malone), whose marriage to the abusive J.J. (Dave Franco) requires extra-strength pain relief, further confuses Lou’s nuclear – in more than one sense of the word – relationships.

Glass fully understands the intimate links between sex and violence. “Love Lies Bleeding” skimps on neither. Depending on your proclivities, you might long for a little more of each, although it is tough to imagine going any harder than the blunt force trauma that serves as the movie’s big turning point. Glass is at her best when at her weirdest. The incorporation of a macrophilia fantasy (which called to mind for Richard Brody the “primordial ‘roid-rage” of James Mason’s Ed Avery in Nicholas Ray’s brilliant “Bigger Than Life”) demonstrates that Glass could be well on her way to something special.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The chief reason to see “The Prank,” a lumpy and unappetizing stew that could use a lot more salt, is legend Rita Moreno. The now 92-year-old phenomenon and EGOT winner (who was also the first Latin American woman to collect an acting Oscar) continues to perform like an unstoppable force. As the last working star who appeared in “Singin’ in the Rain,” Moreno links the present to Hollywood’s shimmering past. In 2021, she was the subject of Mariem Perez Riera’s worthwhile documentary feature, subtitled “Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.” That career retrospective, which acknowledged the often cruel realities Moreno overcame to reach the summit, implicitly argues that the icon deserves to have her pick of projects.

Unfortunately, director Maureen Bharoocha’s movie, limping into theaters after languishing on the shelf since its 2022 premiere at SXSW, will be but a Moreno footnote. In the slight horror-comedy, Moreno plays high school physics teacher Mrs. Wheeler, a sharp-tongued disciplinarian known for her stylish bob, sleek black wardrobe (including ever-present kid gloves) and withering stare. Despite working well past the common retirement age, Wheeler strikes fear into the hearts of students like Ben Palmer (Connor Kalopsis), who is sweating it out over his need to secure a college scholarship. Following a cheating accusation, Ben and his bestie Mei Tanner (Ramona Young) cook up a flimsy plan to accuse Wheeler of murder.

The screenplay by the married writing team of Rebecca Flinn-White and Zak White deserves the largest share of the blame for the movie’s failing report card. Plotted with no concern for even the most rudimentary internal logic, the narrative stumbles and lurches from one incomprehensible sequence to another, ignoring both the rules of coherent storytelling and whatever legal policies and procedures we might expect to be followed by the investigating authorities. Even when the boy-who-cried-wolf “twist” veers into the absurd territory of severed heads in jars, Moreno gamely sticks it out.

The well-established trope of the awful teacher pops up in all kinds of cinematic contexts and genres: Imelda Staunton’s Dolores Umbridge, William Atherton’s Jerry Hathaway and Cameron Diaz’s Elizabeth Halsey are just three disasters who should be kept far away from pupils of any level. Some viewers might remember Helen Mirren’s Eve Tingle, the vindictive history teacher in “Teaching Mrs. Tingle.” And movie and television nerds of a certain age will conjure happier memories of Christopher Lloyd as the nightmarish English instructor B. O. Beanes in the 1986 “Amazing Stories” episode “Go to the Head of the Class.”

“Golden Arm,” Bharoocha’s previous feature directorial outing, was superior to “The Prank” in every category. The ridiculous competitive arm-wrestling comedy, which I argued deserved more attention for the way it grounded its cartoonish subculture in real pathos, consistently piled up laughs that are notably absent from most of “The Prank.” As a rated-R addition to the teen movie pantheon, “The Prank” is also shockingly light on youthful hijinks. Despite the homicidal happenings, few of the supporting characters – including Meredith Salenger as Ben’s mother and Keith David as the principal – express much alarm, even when things start getting strange. Class dismissed.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” concludes, for the most part, the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s original 1965 science fiction epic while (inevitably?) making room for a further onscreen investigation of “Dune Messiah,” the sequel Herbert described as the inversion of the first section’s “heroic melody.” Even at two hours and forty-five minutes, Villeneuve’s version, which he wrote with Jon Spaihts, truncates and streamlines portions of the book to better shape the material as a polished cinematic object. At its very best, “Dune: Part Two” captures the visual grandeur of Herbert’s accomplished world-building and the complex themes questioning the boundaries of religious prophecy and the dangers of messianic belief.

The delay of the film has now aligned its big screen arrival with the latest intensity of the ongoing conflict of the Israel-Hamas war, a coincidence that – given the seemingly endless and eternal fighting in the Middle East – has already invited mention in think pieces and essays stretching beyond the usual confines of the brief review. Others have articulated interest in the ways this big-budgeted and star-studded juggernaut relies so heavily on clothing and design elements that read as, at best, Muslim cosplay and, at worst, cultural appropriation. Nadeine Asbali’s absolutely fierce takedown challenges viewers not to ignore commodification and erasure.

Hanna Flint’s incisive and fair-minded review in “The New Arab” wrestles with Villeneuve’s shortcomings. Flint, the author of “Strong Female Character,” concentrates a significant portion of her essay on the cinematic representation of the Fremen, pointing out that “Little time is spent in establishing these people and their culture beyond fighting, survival and religious fanaticism.” Additionally, the decision to withhold any deeper insight into “the secret histories and traditions” related to Jessica’s ascendancy within the Bene Gesserit sisterhood maintains a kind of mystical distance that others and exoticizes the sect, which may be, for good or ill, the director’s aim.

As a filmmaker, Villeneuve taps into state-of-the-art digital effects not available to David Lynch in the 1980s. To his credit, Villeneuve has maintained diplomacy and respect for what he calls Lynch’s “fantastic interpretation of the book,” even while admitting that the oft-maligned and ill-fated project contains choices “very far away from my sensibility.” I’m not convinced that Villeneuve’s rendering of the Fremen, to mention one example, has been radically improved. It seems like nearly every line of dialogue spoken by Javier Bardem’s delightfully devoted Stilgar is some variation on “We await your orders, Muad’Dib” or an affirmation that Paul is the Chosen One who will lead the way.

I appreciate the fan theories that Stilgar is shrewdly playing the hand he has been dealt, but even if he is outwardly stuck grinding in low gear, Chani (a righteously skeptical and often pissed-off Zendaya) refuses to drink the Usul-flavored Kool-Aid in a depiction that has drawn the most attention for deviating from the page. Meanwhile, Villeneuve introduces several exciting second-installment performers to sweeten the deal. Bringing the perfect note of regal bearing to Shaddam IV, the Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe, Christopher Walken’s hairstyle says just as much as the signature cadence of his offbeat delivery. He’s partnered with Florence Pugh as daughter Princess Irulan, who does her best to transcend the considerable challenges of scenes consisting solely of narrating into her journal.

Léa Seydoux’s Lady Margot Fenring isn’t afforded enough time for the reliably excellent actor to make much of an impact, but Austin Butler gets the spice flowing as House Harkonnen heir Feyd-Rautha, the cruel and violent nephew of the corpulent, gravity-defying Baron Vladimir (Stellan Skarsgård, certainly one of the most Lynchian spillovers). Butler described working with a dialect coach to banish the stubborn accent he developed playing Elvis Presley, which appears to be money well-spent; his mimicry of Skarsgård is as much a spectacle as cinematographer Greig Fraser’s application of infrared technology to render the startling monochrome of Giedi Prime.

In the end, Timothée Chalamet, as our young man of many epithets, stands at the precipice, struggling to reconcile the powerful tug of prophesied ascendancy with the desire to be a teenager in love. His choice, a pivot away from T. E. Lawrence and toward Michael Corleone that still signals the difficulty of avoiding the White Savior trope Herbert would tackle in “Dune Messiah,” lets Villeneuve show the audience that he knows Paul is not the ultimate hero, as tricky as that may be.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

Veteran editor Carla Gutiérrez’s new documentary “Frida,” on the subject of the famed painter whose star has continued to shine with blinding incandescence since a 1980s popular cultural renaissance, premiered to mixed reviews at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in January. Art lovers and biography hounds will be able to judge for themselves when the movie comes to Amazon Prime beginning March 14. At Sundance, Gutiérrez’s film received the festival’s Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award in the U.S. Documentary category, and the movie’s combination of archival photographs, stock footage, journal entries, and animated reconstructions of many of Kahlo’s paintings showcases the filmmaker’s impressive skill set.

Some art historians and/or appreciators have criticized Gutiérrez with that most common of gripes: “Frida” doesn’t manage to do justice to the full breadth of the artist’s life, skipping over this or that and coming up short by not placing the work, the personal, or the political in the “proper” context. Defenders, however, would point to the (seemingly) obvious constraints of the feature-length form, arguing that one can only do so much in 90 minutes. In that sense, this chapter is as good a mediated introduction as (m)any, adding more brushstrokes to a canvas containing a multitude of interpretive explorations; the “Frida Kahlo & Contemporary Thoughts” site, for example, lists more than 15 films to investigate.

The first significant choice of style and structure is Gutiérrez’s decision to draw from Kahlo’s writings – both public and private – to guide the viewer through the journey via the artist’s own words. As read by Fernanda Echevarría, the variety of excerpts do indeed communicate an intimacy that only first-person narration can provide. The cuttings are organized and arranged along major themes that address expected preoccupations: sensuality and sexuality, Mexican identity, the life-changing and catastrophic bus-streetcar collision that would lead to dozens of operations and a lifetime of physical pain, the tumultuous relationship with Diego Rivera, the politics of struggle and revolution, etc.

As happens to powerful icons whose images convey potent shorthand messages to the masses, Frida the symbol long ago passed the point of complex critical understanding by the majority of tourists ringing up postcards, prints, mugs, and shirts in the gift shop. It can be difficult to get past the serene and self-possessed gaze of the woman whose Mona Lisa inscrutability announces more than just gender play via Tehuana dresses and upper-lip and facial hair (for more, see “Why Frida Kahlo’s Unibrow Is Important” by Georgia Simmonds). Hearing directly from Kahlo restores some of the individual who has been subsumed by the celebrity.

The second most distinctive creative decision, and the one that has perhaps caused the most division among viewers, is the use of animation by Sofía Inés Cázares and Renata Galindo to turn many of Kahlo’s iconic images into moving frames. Purists might find themselves wishing that the original paintings had instead been filmed to show texture, scale, and physical context (to at least point in the direction of Walter Benjamin’s “aura” construct), but there is something inviting about the way Cázares, Galindo and their team allow us to think about Kahlo’s choices and compositions with fresh eyes and big imaginations.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

In a short piece published recently in “The New York Times,” author Callie Holtermann summarizes the responses to director S. J. Clarkson’s “Madame Web,” attempting to make some sense of the many sticky strands of social media hot-takes as well as fan and critical backlash to the latest installment in the SSU – Sony’s Spider-Man Universe. Like the existential dread and loneliness captured in Dan Walsh’s webcomic “Garfield Minus Garfield,” the SSU’s live action features, including “Venom,” “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” “Morbius,” the upcoming third “Venom” episode and “Kraven the Hunter,” the absence of Marvel’s flagship hero from the movies that would otherwise demand his presence is a study in windmill-tilting.

Holtermann’s concise analysis lays out the details and ponders the big questions: Is “Madame Web” so bad it’s good? Could the movie really become a future cult classic fueled by quotable lines of dialogue? How responsible is star Dakota Johnson, who made  “ambivalent” comments during the press junket, for the success or failure of the film? How much should the well-documented misogyny of the male-dominated troll community/feedback loop be taken into consideration (especially if their vitriol will erode opportunities for women to direct these films in the future)? Are we descending another rung on the “superhero movie fatigue” ladder?

The movie itself is hardly the worst big-screen superhero tale. Johnson’s Cassandra “Cassie” Webb is based on the precognitive clairvoyant created for the comics by Denny O’Neill and John Romita Jr. in 1980. Director Clarkson, one of a quartet of credited screenwriters, juggles action sequences with standard origin story beats that link Cassie’s harrowing encounters with Ezekiel Sims (a completely forgettable and strangely somnambulant Tahar Rahim) to, among other things, the birth of baby Peter Parker. Along the way, Cassie protects a trio of young women threatened by Sims, who has foreseen his own future defeat at their hands.

Not soon enough, the climax of “Madame Web” will revolve around the villain being dispatched by the massive Pepsi-Cola sign in Long Island City, putting the finishing touches on a ridiculous series of product placements that give Kendall Jenner’s tone-deaf and instantly condemned (and quickly canceled) “Live for Now” spot some competition for worst Pepsi advertising. Whether or not “death by Pepsi” contributed to Johnson’s refusal to watch herself in “Madame Web” as a form of self-care, her gift for withering comic jabs is evident on the screen and off. David Ehrlich observed that the star has a “rare gift for weaponizing social discomfort into sandpaper-dry comedy” when facing down the inanity and monotony of the thankless press interview.

Cassie Webb’s ability to see brief glimpses of possible futures (just far enough ahead for her to make choices that branch off into better outcomes) fits hand-in-glove with the multiverse ethos. But restless science fiction fans will immediately conjure visions of far superior applications of the general premise. I could not stop thinking about the jaw-droppingly brilliant and thoroughly joyous 2020 Japanese feature “Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes.” Director Junta Yamaguchi’s debut, from a screenplay by Makoto Ueda, does in 71 minutes what “Madame Web” fails to accomplish in 116: engage the brain and the heart on an unpredictable thrill ride. But that’s not enough to stop me from watching “Madame Web” again.

Movie review by Greg Carlson

The mixed reviews for “Lisa Frankenstein” are not necessarily indicative of the movie’s charms, which reside primarily in the colorful production and costume design, game performers, choice soundtrack, and frequent references, throwbacks, and homages. Set in 1989, not coincidentally the year of “Heathers” at the Sundance Film Festival following its 1988 Milan premiere, the twisted story from screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Zelda Williams stitches together a vintage-style Tim Burton goth comedy. The end result is as much a mixed bag as the sewn and sutured corpse reanimated by Cole Sprouse in a wordless performance.

Kathryn Newton’s Lisa Swallows can’t catch a break. If her mom’s murder didn’t provide enough trauma, the unpleasantness of evil stepmother Janet (Carla Gugino, woefully underutilized) and a sexual assault by a twerpy classmate amplify the misery. Regularly finding solace in an old cemetery filled with dead bachelors, Lisa’s life flips upside down when a bolt of eerie greenish lightning resurrects a Victorian-era local who immediately takes a shine to Lisa. At this point, it feels like anything could happen. Lisa’s budding relationship with the living dead boy (credited as the Creature) points to a rainbow of potentially weird and kinky paths.

At its best, “Lisa Frankenstein” appreciates the twisted logic of teenagers. Hilariously, the rotten stench and creepy crawlers emanating and wriggling from Lisa’s sad-eyed houseguest fail to dampen her desire to transform the Creature into a physically presentable suitor. For a minute, it seems like the movie might primarily focus on a quest to remake the living dead boy, since he needs a new ear to hear with and a new hand to touch with. He also requires one other special body part, but by the time Williams gets around to addressing that particular issue, the film has much larger messes to clean up.

The presence of Lisa’s crush Michael (Henry Eikenberry) initially points in the direction of a love triangle situating the heroine between the living and the dead, but Williams takes no interest in cultivating the necessary momentum or even the most basic storytelling devices of difficult choices and misunderstandings to suggest that there are any real stakes for Lisa to consider. With the exception of Lisa’s stepsister Taffy, who makes a wonderful foil through the comic choices of veteran Filipino performer and Hollywood newcomer Liza Soberano, the filmmakers show no interest in – pardon the pun – fleshing out the supporting cast.

Williams never quite locates the right tone to accommodate Cody’s arch satirical flourishes. “Lisa Frankenstein” longs to be R-rated and in-your-face, but the PG-13 handcuffs mute and tame all the best ideas. It’s abundantly clear that the “Lisa Frankenstein” universe operates by a set of rules, morals, and ethics miles away from our mundane reality, but the lack of any real alarm at the rising body count is handled with a cavalier indifference that does a genuine disservice to the characters. The far superior and truly subversive “Heathers,” one of the biggest single influences on “Lisa Frankenstein,” is how you do this sort of thing. Veronica Sawyer expresses a blend of fear and incredulity, along with a perfect balance of panic and poise, that Lisa just can’t match.