The First Trailer for Diablo Cody’s “Lisa Frankenstein” Raises the Dead

January 4, 2024

What’s a girl to do when she’s separated from the boy she loves? Well, if she’s in the movies, she’s going to do whatever it takes, even when what’s separating them isn’t overprotective parents, rival romantic competition, or even unrequited love, but death itself. This is the conceit writer Diablo Cody and director Zelda Williams play with in Lisa Frankenstein, a new kind of coming-of-age story where young love requires a little more elbow grease—and perhaps, a new elbow—than your typical fare. The first trailer sets the stakes, and one wonders if, as in 1931’s Frankenstein, adapted from Mary Shelley’s deathless novel, if the neighbors might not be chasing Lisa’s new lover with stakes of their own. (Okay, in the movie, they were actually pitchforks.)

The trailer shows us what happens when Lisa (Kathryn Newton) manages to raise The Creature (Cole Sprouse) from the dead, just as she dreamed, only he comes back in unsurprisingly bad shape. How bad? Even his tears smell. (How can he still produce tears? Movie magic!) We see Lisa attempting to give The Creature a makeover as she struggles to reconcile her feelings for him with the fact that he is, well, a corpse. Then a solution arrives, one that decidedly pushes Lisa Frankenstein into comedy-horror territory in the form of a rude boy who might prove useful to Lisa and The Creature.

Lisa Frankenstein has Cody’s signature mischief and genre-melding, and the cast supporting our two death-crossed lovers is solid—they’re joined by Carla Gugino, Liza Soberano, Jenna Davis, Trina LaFargue, Paola Andino, Ray Gaspard, and more. The trailer is fun, and the movie, lurching into theaters right in time for Valentine’s Day, looks like an early year treat.

Check out the trailer below. Lisa Frankenstein hits theaters on February 9.