I saw this movie kind of on accident a couple days ago when I was going to see a Screen Unseen film at the local AMC. I was in a theater packed full of people who were going in cold as well and the moment I saw the title credits I audibly cheered while the people next to me looked confused, the reason being that I intended to see this movie next week with Wife when we had care for the demons in our house, and this kind of put me in a spot where I could cheat on her through a movie without any of the guilt associated with actively cheating.
Reviews for this film, which I’ve resisted, seem to kind of fall into that special category of “Are you a male critic > you hated seeing this,” which makes me like the movie even more in some respects. This is Zelda Williams (!) debut film with writer Diablo Cody (Jennifer’s Body, Juno) and the script contains all the electricity, momentum, and darkness of its predecessors and spiritual forebears, Thoroughbreds, Flower, and Do Revenge. It’s a high school movie, which instantly puts it in the highest, most desirable of genre movies for me, alongside some entries from last year like Polite Society (kind of) and Bottoms (more intentionally; Wife still can’t get over the gen Z pout phenomenon). The aesthetics of the movie are kind of an ouroboros in the sense that we have Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse, two actors who haven’t set foot within twenty years of the 1980s and yet all of their clothes, all of the homages in their fashion, their music, the cars, the high school cliques and archetypes, are doing their best to parrot the 80s for an audience of (maybe? majority?) viewers who have also not set foot in the 80s. At the same time, there are so many jabs and sly winks at the sex positivity and inclusiveness of the present day wrapped in Newton’s perfect, straightforward, guileless deadpan.
The casting, besides its effortless inclusiveness, is just the perfect assemblage of comic veterans and new blood. Joe Chrest, the 80s dad in this movie, who plays the 80s dad in every damn season of Stranger Things, feels like he is really tapping into some ancient and perverse magic in order to play Lisa’s dad, like he has somehow become all of dads, regardless of age, regardless of the appropriateness to the plot, race, class, time period. Lisa’s explicitly slutty, explicitly popular, explicitly Hawaiian, and super nice step sister Taffy puts a spin on the cheerleader trope by trying to find the silver lining behind (almost) every cloud and her optimism in the face of the Arkham horror elements of this plot is part of the fun. Cole Sprouse does an impressive job of not saying one damn word while also performing some gross and completely worthy physical comedy. Name one more heartthrob who MIMES his way through an entire comedy and I will give you the next Ryan Gosling, my friends. Carla Gugino of Watchman fame (!) is back to be the world’s worst step mom. And of course, Kathryn Newton continues to spit straight fire, creating a deeply strange and unsettling but also completely charming and strong goth protagonist for our time.
As I’m writing this I’m about to see this movie for a second time with Wife as a matinee (Feb 20) and have no misgivings whatsoever. Friend brought two mythical friends from years past to a winery this afternoon for us to meet and we talked about our favorite movie genres (Friend: none, Wife: French movies about food with no dialogue, Me: High School movies, Friend’s mythical friend: “have you heard of–what’s it called?–Edge of Seventeen?” Have I heard of Edge of Seventeen oh you temptress.
There are some open questions about the ending of this movie that I think should be preempted with a spoiler alert. I’m not actually so sure that I understand the ending as anything other than a full-throated endorsement of suicide, which seems pretty suspect coming from the daughter of Robin Williams, but what am I to do besides point you to some of the most egregious examples of suicide as plot in movies past? Shall I count the ways, It: Part Two? On the Count of Three? Talk to Me? In Lisa Frankenstein the fact that there is a sure-fire second chance for everyone in the afterlife makes it feel a little cuter, but at the same time, feels like there were other options for a girl. When so much of the movie is consumed in making sure that the murders are moral, it feels like there should be some other way of ensuring the preservation of the star-crossed lovers’ relationship.
