The Oscar-winning screenwriter aims to recall 80s classics from Heathers to Beetlejuice but there are too many parts missing
The blindsiding success of 2007’s Juno gave Hollywood an unusual new star, a young and outspoken stripper-turned-screenwriter whose very existence upended dusty industry expectations, and one who became hard to easily pigeonhole. Diablo Cody, who wrote her first hit screenplay before she turned 30, was rewarded with an Oscar, and within a profession where household names are rarer than rare, she became a minor celebrity, all eyes fixated on whatever her next move would be.
Cody’s follow-up – the poppy supernatural horror Jennifer’s Body – turned those cheers to jeers, an Oscar winner suddenly attracting the unfair attention of the Razzies (an admittedly heinous institution with a profoundly ****** voting record) and repelling that of audiences. The response was a mix of bafflement and bile and it was only years later that it started to find an audience as a Midnight Movie mainstay and the subject of thinkpiece upon thinkpiece praising its sly feminism and deeply underrated Megan Fox performance. Its stature has grown to the size that Cody’s new movie Lisa Frankenstein arguably only exists because of it, another high school-set comedy horror sold as the latest from the writer of Jennifer’s Body, a curious about-turn and an encouraging sign of how streaming access has helped transform misses into hits in recent years.
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