Dead And Loving It

Lisa Frankenstein writer Diablo Cody mines her teenage years to bring twisted teen lovers to life

- TARA BENNETT

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, DIRECTOR Karyn Kusama and BAFTA- and Academy Award-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody disrupted the horror genre with their gory feminist romp Jennifer's Body. On release, many audiences didn't quite get the humour and subtext of their revenge fantasy starring Megan Fox. But in the years since, critics have re-evaluated the film as being delightfully subversive and underappreciated.

Now Cody has circled back to the genre with her original screenplay Lisa Frankenstein.

Essentially a love letter to her goth youth in the '80s, Cody's script fuses together the DNA of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with Tim Burton's oeuvre and a sprinkling of David Lynch's Wild At Heart.

Cody tells Red Alert that the idea for Lisa Frankenstein was born out of the lockdowns of the pandemic. She had spent years working on the book for the Alanis Morissette musical Jagged Little Pill, and then life crushed their efforts. "The show opened on Broadway in December 2019 and then proceeded to shut down immediately due to the pandemic," she sighs.

"So I'm sitting at home. I have three kids. At the time, I had a pretty fresh divorce and I didn't really know what to do with myself.