Lisa Frankenstein Ending Explained: Undead Love, Resurrected
This article contains major spoilers for "Lisa Frankenstein."
Hollywood has its eyes on "Lisa Frankenstein." The '80s horror comedy marks the feature directorial debut of Zelda Williams ("The Legend of Korra," "Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," "Shrimp"), the return of Diablo Cody ("Jennifer's Body," "Juno," "Tully") to the teen horror comedy subgenre for the first time in 15 years, and has the potential to be the first big box office hit of 2024. If you had told me four years ago that one day an '80s-set zombie rom-com featuring "Freaky" star Kathryn Newton and Cole "Jughead Jones" Sprouse would be one of the most anticipated releases of the year, I'd wonder how you got a time machine and where you put my diaries.
Given its tone and delightfully odd story, "Lisa Frankenstein" is sure to be a polarizing film. It's an '80s film to its core, not just in its setting, but also in its approach to comedy. Many have compared the film to "Weird Science" given the "build-a-boy" plot of Lisa Frankenstein literally building a boyfriend out of an undead corpse and some fresh body parts, but it's also similar to "Weird Science" in the sense that there's a lot of ridiculous hijinks, scenarios that do not exist within the realm of possibility, and borderline farcical comedy.
Lest we forget, "Weird Science" is a film about two boys who use a supercomputer to create the girl of their dreams, but it's also a film where they turn Bill Paxton into a pile of literal crap and mutant bikers crash a teenage party. "Lisa Frankenstein" brings the same absurdly wonderful energy to the table, swapping out the sci-fi for classic horror. Does that sound overwhelming? Never fear, I, /Film's resident "Lisa Frankenstein" superfan, is here to help break down the film for you — limb by bloody, dismembered limb.
What happens in Lisa Frankenstein?
Lisa Swallows is weird. She's a weirdo. She doesn't fit in, and she doesn't want to fit in. While her classmates and step-sister Taffy (Liza Soberano) are worried about typical high-school milestones like memorizing cheers or making a good impression at the latest rager, Lisa is hanging out at the cemetery and talking to her closest friend — a dead, unmarried pianist named Mr. Frankenstein with a really fancy headstone. After a mildly traumatic incident at a party, Lisa sinks deeper into isolation, but then a lightning bolt during a storm reanimates the corpse of Mr. Frankenstein, aka The Creature, because "Lisa Frankenstein" is an '80s movie in more than just aesthetics, which includes a required suspension of disbelief.
Why does the lightning strike his grave and reanimate him? Why isn't he just a skeleton after all these years? How does he know where Lisa lives to walk out of the graveyard and to her house? How did he make it to her house without her nosy neighbors noticing? LITERALLY, WHO CARES?! It's a movie about an undead guy falling in love with a teenager and a teenage girl falling in love with a corpse. If you're getting hung up on logistics you're focusing on the wrong things.
Lisa brings the undead boy up into her bedroom to clean him off (complete with an outfit change montage) and decides to keep him in her closet whenever her family is around. Lisa is typically pretty introverted, but with the Creature, she can't seem to keep quiet. He might be undead, but Lisa has never felt more alive. She's confident, she's driven, and she's embracing her true self, and she learns to love the art of killing.
Can't fight this feeling anymore
For the most part, the Creature looks pretty good for a dead guy. However, he's missing a hand, an ear, and ... his manhood. After Lisa's overbearing, WASPy step-mother Janet (Carla Gugino) threatens to have her institutionalized for breaking her Precious Moments figurines, the Creature kills her in Lisa's bedroom and requests that she sew mommie dearest's ear onto his skull. Unfortunately, the ear can't actually hear. Considering lightning resurrected him, Lisa decides to try him out in her sister's tanning bed, which tends to mildly electrocute whoever tries it out. By the glory of Mary Shelley, the tanning bed works! Not only can the Creature now hear, but he's also gotten a tiny bit more attractive now that he's not so pale.
Lisa and the Creature are now on a mission to rebuild this boy to completion. Need a hand? Might as well hack up the kid who tried to feel Lisa up at a party while she was drugged and chuck his body into an open grave! After all, he was going to do terrible things with that hand, so if anything, they're doing society a service by taking him out. The pair's friendship grows deeper each day, including a charming scene of the Creature sight-reading REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling" on the piano while Lisa sings off-key. She eventually invites him to share her bed so he's not cramped in the closet and teaches him about the power of the Hitachi Magic Wand — both its advertised use and ... well, the way it's actually used. But it's when Lisa expresses not wanting to die a virgin that things take a turn. Lisa wants to lose it to someone she really has a crush on, Michael (Henry Eikenberry), which makes the Creature jealous. Alas, in typical teen girl fashion, Lisa doesn't realize that the man of her dreams is right before her eyes.
The Creature makes a big chop
Lisa's dad (Joe Chrest) and sister Taffy are distraught about their mom's disappearance (not knowing Lisa and the Creature killed her and hid her body), but Lisa feels untouchable. Taffy bails out on school feeling too distraught, but Lisa struts through the halls like she's in control of the world. Because, to some extent, she is. Her world, that is. Unfortunately, the walls are beginning to close in on Lisa. The police are starting to put the clues together that link Lisa to the murder of her classmate, and with her mother still missing, these coincidences are becoming a little too hard to ignore.
She storms out of school knowing that the jig is soon up, and decides that she's going to lose her virginity before the time is up. Michael wasn't in class so she correctly assumes he's skipping, and heads for his house. The Creature rolls up in a car he's stolen (yes, he can drive, don't ask) and takes her to Michael's house. Lisa runs up the stairs, fully ready to throw herself at her crush when she realizes ... MICHAEL IS HOOKING UP WITH TAFFY!
She's furious. She can't believe her eyes, and she delivers Michael one hell of a monologue about how even cool art boys won't give weirdo art girls the time of day because they can't bear the thought of a girl being just as cool or smart as he is. And then, out of nowhere, the Creature arrives with an axe and CHOP! Michael's manhood goes flying. The Creature, now in possession of Michael's penis, bails and Lisa, realizing Taffy is a little more than traumatized, takes her blood-soaked sister with her to find her undead boyfriend.
What the end of Lisa Frankenstein means
Lisa finds the Creature at the cemetery while Taffy makes a break for it, and he indicates to Lisa that he loves her and wants to be the one to have sex with her. The two run back to her bedroom (but not before killing and dumping a cop in the cemetery), Lisa sews the penis onto her beloved, she puts him back in the tanning bed, and now, looking his most handsome, the two finally have sex.
At the end of William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," the two star-crossed lovers are dead, and their families are left to mourn the senseless tragedy and recognize that their familial strife is to blame for the loss of their children. In "Lisa Frankenstein," Lisa finally gets to fulfill her wish of being with the young man whose grave she hangs out at, but the way she intended before lightning brought him to life. He showed up at her door because she said she wanted to be with him, but what she meant was that she wanted to be dead.
Knowing the police were closing in on her, Lisa decided to take her own life by electrocuting herself in the tanning bed, aware that she could later be resurrected and would be able to be with her new love, forever. It's just as her G.W. Pabst dream predicted — taking on the role of the titular "Bride of Frankenstein," only this time, the Bride actually likes the monster.
After having grave-robbed Lisa's final resting place, the Creature sits on a park bench with Lisa in his lap, having regained the ability to speak, and reads her beautifully macabre literature from days gone by. Just as Lisa helped the Creature adjust to life in the 1980s and learn how to be a semi-functioning human again (although he apparently went to the Michael Myers School of Driving), the time has come for the student to be the master. The Creature will do the same for Lisa, and the pair will live undead, happily ever after.
Are Lisa Frankenstein and Jennifer's Body connected?
"Lisa Frankenstein" marks the return of Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody to the teen horror-comedy sphere, 15 years after "Jennifer's Body" was unfairly maligned by a bunch of knuckle-dragging mouth breathers who were upset the film didn't have, and I quote, "moar bewbs." The film was incorrectly marketed toward young men in the hopes that the allure of star Megan Fox would lead to ticket sales when in reality, the film was far more in line with appealing to audiences of women and LGBTQIA+ people. It took 15 years, but "Jennifer's Body" has been rightfully reclaimed by the people who were deprioritized at the time of release, and Cody is finally hailed as the genius real ones have always known her to be.
Just before the release of "Lisa Frankenstein," Cody declared that the two films take place in a shared universe – one that apparently results in mid-tier indie bands failing at virginal sacrifice and creating a succubus and weird teenage girls resurrecting a boyfriend from beyond the grave. Cody also expressed interest in a possible sequel or reboot of "Jennifer's Body," looking to re-imagine the story for Generation Alpha. While it's unlikely that there will ever be a crossover between the two films (as they canonically take place around 20 years apart), the ending of "Lisa Frankenstein" seemed to inspire the future world of "Jennifer's Body." Who knows, maybe Lisa and The Creature are still out there somewhere ... harvesting a scalp so Lisa can have a new hairdo.