BLEEDING LOVE

LISAFRANKENSTEIN Azombie love story powered by pure female rage…

Anger is an energy for Lisa Frankenstein (Kathryn Newton) in Zelda Williams’ feature debut

1 IT’S ALOVING TRIBUTE TO THE 80S

Zelda Williams wanted Lisa Frankenstein to be an unabashed ‘love letter’ to the 80s, zombies and romcoms. Scripted by Diablo Cody, the story of a teenage girl, Lisa (Kathryn Newton), falling for a reanimated corpse, Creature (Cole Sprouse), is transformed into a fun, wacky and ghoulish delight in the director’s hands. ‘I’ve been lovingly calling it Edward Scissorhands, by way of Death Becomes Her. I feel like everything these days has to look at the joke and acknowledge it.’ But she wasn’t interested in being meta. ‘I wanted to do the opposite.’

2 A WASLOOKBOOK WAS KEY

‘I have something called aphantasia [the inability to create mental imagery] so I need visual references.’ That meant creating a lookbook when Williams was initially approached about the project through an old friend. Crammed inside were references to A Nightmare on Elm Street, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and An American Werewolf in London. ‘I loved how their special effects weren’t horror based, it was more comedy,’ she says of John Landis’ 1981 hit. ‘I wanted to approach that with Creature where you could make something gruesome without it being scary.’

3 COMMUNICATION ISN’T EASY

Creature is unable to speak, which created a challenge for ex-Riverdale actor Sprouse. ‘I had him take mime classes for a couple months,’ the director explains. ‘An entirely silent male lead is a really great opportunity for physicality.’ Newton, meanwhile, had the tricky task of carrying their scenes together when it came to the dialogue. ‘Kathryn reminds me a lot of Madeline Kahn. I had them watch Young Frankenstein early on before we started.’

‘I had [the cast] watch Young Frankenstein early on...’

ZELDA WILLIAMS

4 IT’S ABOUT GRIEVING YOUR OWN WAY…

Lisa is still reeling after her mother’s brutal murder and her journey is coming to a place of acceptance as she struggles with her grief. It’s an experience that the director connected with personally as the daughter of the late actor Robin Williams, who died in 2014. ‘So much of the journey I’ve been on is the idea that your grief and the way that you express it isn’t necessarily going to be palatable for everyone else.’ Lisa’s grief is ‘extremely violent and unpalatable’ but she’s also ‘this really fun, effervescent woman’.

5…AND THE POWER OF FEMALE RAGE TO HEAL

Anger is the other emotion that colours Lisa Frankenstein a bloody, bright red. As her relationship with Creature develops, she realises it’s OK to release all her pent-up fury. ‘It’s [about the] acceptance of female rage being an OK reaction.’ Lisa’s steps towards selfdiscovery help to heal her trauma.

‘In finding her way towards unhinged kookiness, she is more herself and also accepting of love.’