Summary

• Lisa and the Creature in Lisa Frankenstein develop a twisted romance, even though the monster's speech is limited.
• The Creature says a finite number of words and doesn't speak until very late in the film.
• Once the Creature speaks, he recites a poem written for Frankenstein's author, Mary Shelley, by her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Warning: SPOILERS for Lisa FrankensteinCole Sprouse hardly speaks as the Creature in Lisa Frankenstein's cast, express their love for one another. For the Creature, it takes rising from the dead, a few murders, and some time to escape the friend zone, and for Lisa, it takes getting over a high school crush and a bit of a stint as an aiding and abetting accomplice.

Coming from the minds of writer Diablo Cody and director Zelda Williams, Lisa Frankenstein unfolds as an outlandishly funny, horror-filled coming-of-age story about the young teenager Lisa and her corpse friend's journey to obtain love and happiness. As the tale's title suggests, the 2024 horror movie finds inspiration from the classic genre novel Frankenstein and its author, Mary Shelley. Sprouse takes on the likeness of Frankenstein's monster as the Creature in Lisa Frankenstein, except his reanimation process is awfully unique to the iconic canon and often involves a faulty, 80s-style tanning bed.

Cole Sprouse Only Says 91 Words In Lisa Frankenstein

The Creature's Speech Is Severely Limited As A Result Of Rising From The Dead

After a series of unfortunate events, including unwanted advances by a classmate and her mother's ing, Lisa wishes over a gravestone in the Bachelor's Grove Cemetery to be with the man buried beneath her, which in her mind meant deceased and six feet under. Later that night, a bizarre storm es through, and a bolt of green lightning strikes the very same gravestone. Miraculously, Lisa's wish comes true, albeit by bringing the unnamed man to her, breathing and back from the dead, but not without severe, consequential limitations, such as impaired speech and motor skills.

"...because he has recently risen, he doesn't have control over his newly functioning body nor possess all of his body parts."

The Creature quite literally ascends straight out of the dirt and barges into Lisa's life, but because he has recently risen, he doesn't have control over his newly functioning body nor possess all of his body parts. As such, Sprouse's performance as the Creature consists of jerky, unrestrained movements throughout most of the film and as little as 91 words spoken. Much of the way that the movie conveys how the Creature is feeling is through Sprouse's silent acting skills or the creatively tailored and perfectly timed Lisa Frankenstein soundtrack.

Cole Sprouse Doesn't Speak Until 96 Minutes Into Lisa Frankenstein

The Creature Speaks After His Reanimation Process Is Complete

It's a while before the Creature can fully reanimate into a human form, as it is a timely, horrid course of events that he and Lisa only get the hang of relatively late in the movie. The process finds Lisa and the Creature seizing the body parts he needs, sewing them onto his body, zapping him in her backyard tanning bed for adherence, and waiting for him to adjust. Because of the labor and acclimatization period, it takes the better part of the movie for the Creature to move around more naturally and 96 minutes for him to speak.

Lisa Frankenstein doesn't fully expand on the Creature's reanimation process yet suggests that the more zaps of electricity the Creature endures, the more human he becomes. At the start, a bolt of lighting brings the Creature back from the dead in a bug-riddled, dirt-encrusted, and broken form - but as the movie unravels, and he undergoes additional electrical treatments from the tanning bed, he starts to appear and act increasingly more human. By Lisa Frankenstein's ending, the Creature looks like a human entirely and is in enough control of his body to read Lisa a complete poem.

What Poem The Creature Reads In Lisa Frankenstein's Ending & What It Really Means

The Creature Recites "To Mary" By Percy Bysshe Shelley

In Lisa Frankenstein's twisty conclusion, Lisa finds herself being nursed back from the dead by the Creature. After dying in the tanning bed fire she started, the final scene shows her wrapped up in bandages and lying across the Creature's lap, who comforts Lisa by eloquently reading to her from a book of Percy Bysshe Shelley's poems. The love poem the Creature recites is titled "To Mary" and was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in honor of Frankenstein's author, Mary Shelley, when they were romantically involved.

Percy and Mary Shelly's love affair and subsequent marriage was anything but a fairy tale, being born from infidelity and enduring bouts of poverty, loss, and tragedy (The Rosenbach). When the Creature reads Percy's love letter aloud, it becomes apparent that Lisa Frankenstein was a creative depiction of the Shelleys' dark romance as much as an ode to Mary's iconic Frankenstein canon. The Creature and Lisa's love withstood the horror of the Lisa Frankenstein movie, at times at the expense of others, which eerily resembles the love affair of Percy and Mary Shelley.

Lisa Frankenstein is available to stream on Peacock.

Source: The Rosenbach