Fifteen years after “Jennifer’s Body,” writer Diablo Cody returns to the horror genre with a teen riff on Mary Shelley’s gothic masterpiece. “Lisa Frankenstein,” now playing in theatres, breathes life into a reanimated corpse and the misunderstood teenager who loves him.
Set in 1989, the phantasmagorical romantic comedy stars Kathryn Newton as Lisa Swallows, a gloomy Goth who feels out of step with the world. “Lisa looks good,” says her step sister Taffy (Liza Soberano). “She could even do pageants if she had congeniality.”
Lisa, the survivor of a horrific axe attack that took the life of her mother, writes dark poetry, watches silent movies and hangs around the Bachelor Grove Cemetery, a rundown burial ground near her high school. She makes wax rubbings of the gravestones, and is particularly drawn to the marker of a handsome young Victorian era man whose bust sits atop his grave.
“I just don’t think anyone should be forgotten,” she says.
At school, she has a crush on Michael (Henry Eikenberry), the hipster editor of the school literary magazine, but her withdrawn nature prevents her from making the first move. “I can always count on Lisa to work Saturdays,” says her boss at the dry cleaner where she is a seamstress, “because she can’t get a date.”
At home, her father (Joe Chrest) is the mild-mannered counterpart to her evil stepmother (Carla Gugino), a psychiatric nurse who would love nothing more than to ship Lisa off to a residential psyche ward.
When a freak lightning storm strikes the crucifix necklace Lisa draped over her favorite grave, the young man (“Riverdale’s” Cole Sprouse) is reanimated and makes his way to Lisa’s home. After a meet-not-so-cute, they form an emotional connection.
They complete one another, except that he’s not quite complete. He’s almost perfect, save for some culture shock and a few missing bits and pieces, which they attempt to replace and rebuild with the help of a few unwilling victims and the electric charge of a faulty tanning bed.
“Lisa Frankenstein” isn’t just a gender swapped “Weird Science,” or a riff on the scientific hubris of “Frankenstein.” It’s a high school outsider story about loss and love with a hint of mayhem thrown in for good measure. Cody’s screenplay is often more strange than actually funny, but the underlying theme of forming connections—even if it is with a guy who “speaks” in grunts—is heartfelt and even touching. Sure, it’s still a slasher movie, but one more interested in what makes the heart beat, not what stops the heart from beating.
Newton, who visually channels “Who’s That Girl” era Madonna, is eccentric yet charming, building empathy for Lisa, even though she’s aiding and abetting some pretty heinous acts in the name of love.
As the zombie heartthrob, Sprouse radiates heavy Edward Scissorhands vibes in a role Johnny Depp would likely have played if this movie was made in the early 1990s.
Gugino goes all in as a mommy dearest type but it is Soberano who steals scenes as Taffy, Lisa’s superficial but big-hearted step-sister.
In “Lisa Frankenstein” director Zelda Williams, daughter of the late, great Robin Williams, creates a stylistic homage to both John Hughes and Tim Burton. It’s a sweet and strange zombie love story that understands teenage angst and how the heart wants what it wants, even if that heart no longer beats.
“The Blackening,” a new horror satire now playing in theatres, answers a question never before addressed in a horror film. In the world of modern slasher films, the Black characters are always the first to die, so this new film asks, “How would that change if the entire cast is Black?
Set on a Juneteenth weekend at a remote Airbnb in the middle of nowhere, the story begins with party hosts Morgan (Yvonne Orji) and Shawn (Jay Pharoah) prepping the house in advance of their guest’s arrivals. In the Game Room they find a game called The Blackening, with a Monopoly-style design around a racist blackface caricature in the center of the board.
Shocked by the game’s iconography, they are even more shocked when the game demands they answer a series of questions, or they will be killed. They play along until Shawn gets a question wrong, and things quickly go south.
Cut to the others as they make their way to the cabin for a weekend of “reckless, unadulterated fun.” Lawyer Lisa (Antoinette Robertson), her BFF Dewayne (Dewayne Perkins, who co-wrote the script), Allison (Grace Byers) and former gang member King (Melvin Gregg) are in one car. Arriving separately are the boozy Shanika (X Mayo), Lisa’s on-and-off boyfriend Nnamdi (Sinqua Walls) and Clifton (Jermaine Fowler), an oddball who says he was invited by Morgan, but no one seems to know him.
As the night wears on weird things start to happen. Doors open by themselves and strange characters appear in the shadows. Not that anyone notices… at first. Dewayne is high on MDMA while everyone else, save for Clifton, plays the card game Spades.
The drinks flow as the old friends gets caught up, and soon the attention turns to the Game Room and the unusual game Morgan and Shawn played hours earlier before their disappearance. With the remaining guests crowded around the board, the game begins to talk and taunt. “If you answer my questions correctly you will live,” the game says, “and Morgan will be released. Get one wrong and you will die.”
As the game asks questions like “Name five Black actors who appeared on ‘Friends,’” it becomes clear the danger is real, and there are consequences for their answers. This is not just a board game, it is a game of survival. As panic sets in, the group has to make a crucial decision. Do we stay together or split up and try and get help?
“The Blackening” borrows tropes from familiar slasher movies. The remote cabin in the woods is a classic location, we meet a couple redneck hillbillies at a gas station and there’s more than a hint of “Saw” on display. But what the movie does is take those elements and use them through a lens to explore Blackness, racism and popular culture. It’s a movie loaded with subtext, one that uses the genre to speak to issues that confront Black people every day.
In its examination of stereotypes and prejudice, from within and outside of their group, the movie tackles big topics but does so with a great deal of humor and some real suspense. The allegories may be more effective than the actual gore, but despite the light touch with the bloody violence, “The Blackening” achieves something special and interesting within its genre.
Humour and horror may elicit different reactions, a giggle or a gasp, but in many ways they are the flip sides of the same coin. Both genres rely on timing and tension to make their point and both act as stream valves for emotions. A case in point? The supernatural shenanigans of “Extra Ordinary,” a new film now on VOD, starring Will Forte as a Satanist, that finds a very pleasing mix of silly and scary.
Set in rural Ireland, “Extra Ordinary” is the story of Rose (Maeve Higgins), a driving instructor with a gift for communicating to the dead courtesy of her late celebrity ghost buster father (Risteárd Cooper). People leave her messages asking her to use her supernatural skills for all sorts of things including, “finding my charger” and “looking into whether I’m pregnant.” She has left the paranormal behind, haunted by the unfortunate childhood accident that claimed her father’s life during the exorcism of a dog. “I don’t use my gifts anymore,” she says. “It’s too dangerous.”
In another part of town recent widower, the double-named Martin Martin (Barry Ward), is having some problems with his late wife who won’t stay dead—she stills runs the house and leaves messages like “You Must Pay… the Car Tax written in the steam on the bathroom mirror—and his teenage daughter Sarah (Emma Martin) has had enough. “We can’t go on like this,” says Sarah. “If you are too scared, I’m going to call someone.” “Who you gonna call,” Martin replies, in one of the film’s many references to other spooky movies.
Of course, the only person in town to call is Rose. She resists but gives in when one-hit-wonder Christian Winter (Will Forte) enters the picture. He’s a Satanist who needs to sacrifice a virgin so his next album will be a hit and he has his eye on Sarah. “They say the devil is in the details,” Christian says, “and on this album all the details are just right.”
“Extra Ordinary” works so well not because of the gross outs—which are low fi but fun—and not simply because of the jokes but because of the characters. Higgins, as the lonely and lovable Rose shares great chemistry with Ward, who displays laser sharp comic timing as he, possessed by the ghost of his late wife, jumps from personality to personality. Forte ups the ante, bringing his “in for a penny, in for a pound” style of extreme characterization to Christian, teetering on the edge of overkill with his blend of buffoonery and mysticism but never topples over.
Directors and co-writers Enda Loughman and Mike Ahern find just the right mix of laughs and lunacy to underscore “Extra Ordinary’s” story of lost souls looking to move on with their lives after loss, even if the passed on still cast a long shadow. “You are not killing my dead wife,” Martin says in a line that sums up the movie’s absurdity and humanity in just seven words.
It’s no secret that Nicolas Cage’s taste in movie roles has changed from the days when he starred in A-list films like Raising Arizona, Moonstruck and Leaving Las Vegas. The 54-year-old actor appears to flip a coin when deciding what to make these days. Sometimes he gets lucky — The Croods has a sequel on the way and Joe made some box office bank — while other times he ends up in films like Outcast, a period piece whose outlandish story careens through Europe and Asia like a drunken soldier on shore leave.
It’s trendy to write Cage off as an actor throwing his talent away, more concerned with cash than art. YouTube brims with videos like Crazy Cage Moments and Cage Rage. Between them they’ve racked up millions of views, which is certainly more people — give or take several zeroes — that saw his recent bizarro-world revenge film Mandy or direct-to-oblivion domestic thriller Inconceivable. And yet, no matter how low rent some of his recent output is, he’s usually compelling.
The vids are an eye-opening compendium of Cage’s trademarked brand of extreme acting — a method of over-emoting perfected in the more than 80 movies he’s made since his debut (under his real name Nicolas Coppola) in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Citing The Incredible Hulk star Bill Bixby as a major influence, he has always been, for better and for worse, one of our most completely fearless actors.
This weekend’s Mom and Dad promises an extra helping of full-throttle Cage. He calls it his favourite movie in a decade, while Glen Kenny, writing in the New York Times said, “In this morbid satire about parents trying to kill their kids, Mr. Cage has plenty of opportunity to go full him.” Cage, who forever will be best known for hits like Adaptation, National Treasure and Leaving Las Vegas, has made many other movies that are worth a second look.
One writer called Cage’s work in 1989’s Vampire’s Kiss “a grand stab at all-out, no-holds-barred comic acting or one of the worst dramatic performances in a film this year,” but decades later the movie has earned cult status because of Cage’s edgy work. The story of a man who may — or may not — be turning into a vampire is best remembered as the film in which Cage ate a live cockroach, but also features one of his most unhinged performances.
A few years later, somewhere between Honeymoon in Vegas and Guarding Tess, came Red Rock West, a genre-busting movie — Ebert said it “exists sneakily between a western and a thriller, between a film noir and a black comedy” — that unfairly barely made it to theatres. Cage hands in some of his best work as a broke but honest drifter, but only took the role after Kris Kristofferson turned it down.
Existing at the intersection of Vampire’s Kiss and Red Rock West is Wild at Heart, a film that perfectly showcases Cage’s manic energy. As Sailor, a lover boy on the run from hit men hired by his girlfriend’s mother, he’s a one-of-a-kind, an Elvis wannabe with a snakeskin jacket and an attitude. It’s a bravura performance. Like the jacket, which he says “represents a symbol of my individuality,” Wild at Heart is a symbol of his artistic individuality.
It is a safe bet that you’ve never seen a movie quite like “Mom and Dad.” Starring Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair as parents trying to murder their children it is dark yet goofy. It’s trashy with no redeeming qualities and that’s what makes it great… or at least a fun night out at the movies.
Cage and Blair are Brent and Kendall Ryan, the slightly bored suburban parents of Carly (Anne Winters) and Josh (Zackary Arthur). He longs for his wild years, she is a devoted mom, but concerned about aging. When a mysterious plague—or is it mass hysteria?—hits town, turning parents against their kids, Brent and Kendall spend twenty-four-hours trying to trap and kill their kids. Finally they can act on all the resentments they’ve been harbouring against their kids for forcing them to grow up and leave their youth behind.
“Mom and Dad” is the very definition of a midnight movie. Cage, a master at playing heightened reality, has rarely been, well, Cagier and the sight of Blair sizing up tools to kill her daughter—should she use a meat hammer or long kitchen knife—is delightful in the most disturbing of ways.
Director Brian Taylor brings the same wild anarchic spirit he brought to movies like “Crank” and “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.” In a quick 85 minutes he provides set-up, quick character studies and enough twisted action to keep eyeballs dancing and then, as though he ran out of film and couldn’t finish the film, it ends. Cuts to black just as it feels like the story is going to head into even wilder territory. I doubt it’s a cliffhanger to trigger a sequel (the story doesn’t have very far to go) so the suddenness of it comes as a shock—almost as much of a shock as parents trying to gas their own offspring.
I suppose “Mom and Dad” may have a secret agenda, a hidden subtext about filicide and the toxic relationships that push people to do the unthinkable, but if it is there, it is hidden under layers of raucously un-PC humour.
