Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has served as inspiration for tons of movies in the past, and that was also the case with one of the latest entries on the 2024 movie schedule, Lisa Frankenstein. In the movie, Disney Channel and Riverdale alum Cole Sprouse puts a fresh spin on Frankenstein’s monster, and CinemaBlend was able to sit down with him and his co-star, Kathryn Newton. It was during the discussion that he explained his character's grunts and revealed the backstory he created for him.
When it comes to Lisa Frankenstein, the story gets going when the corpse of a man from the Victorian era is raised from the dead via a freak lightning storm and arrives at the titular characters door following her frequent visits to his grave plot. When I asked Cole Sprouse what it was like playing the Creature, who only communicates via grunts, he explained to me how he and director Zelda Williams decided upon how the character would express himself:
I did it as a joke. On one of the first days and then we liked it. and I talked to Zelda about it and I said, ‘Why don't we just get a take of almost every scene with it?’ So, in the beginning, we did grunts and no grunts, because on paper he was completely silent. No vocalizations, no anything.
As Cole Sprouse shared, the Creature was initially not supposed to utter a sound but, thanks to his own desire to play around with the character, he ended up getting to do grunts rather than words. I was curious if he had any notes in the script about what the ghoul was really trying to say, but that apparently wasn’t the case. As Kathryn Newton shared:
Yeah, in the script, it was never like ‘Creature says yes’ or anything. It was never that kind of direction. So even when we were filming it, I never felt like he was emoting to me. But as Lisa, I never understood it. I never knew what he was talking about, which I think is part of the charm. It's the character, right? She's not listening to anybody.
The actress' character is a very troubled teenager, who is dealing with the loss of a close family member when the Creature comes into her life. As a relationship forms between her and the corpse, her confidence grows… but so does the number of vicious crimes she commits. If you’re curious about the Creature’s origins, Cole Sprouse also shared the hidden backstory he and Zelda Williams invented for the undead character. In Sprouse’s words:
Zelda and I did actually [think of a backstory]. He has a scar on his face, and he used to have a scar over his heart. I believe that we didn't end up showing that he had I think died in a fencing duel for love was the deal. It wasn't [in the script], but we built prosthetics around it, so it was deeply integrated into the character. I think at one point maybe we thought about talking about it or at least acknowledging it in the animated portion, but yeah, I mean he was essentially born again. So he got to kind of decide what he was. He carried all the gentlemanly etiquette of his time period. But, he was a hopeless romantic.
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While this isn’t something that is talked about in the movie itself, it’s a really fun fact that really adds to the experience whenever you're watching the character. There are a number of interesting behind-the-scenes tidbits about the film. When CinemaBlend also spoke to the Lisa Frankestein director Zelda Williams and writer Diablo Cody, shared that the movie was almost rated R. Cody also opened up to us about how her 2009 horror film Jennifer’s Body impacted the making of the movie as well.
This creepy flick has been met with mixed reviews by critics thus far, with CinemaBlend’s own Lisa Frankenstein review giving it 3.5 out of 5 stars and calling it a “deliciously gory” good time. You'll definitely want to see it for yourself, if anything just to see Cole Sprouse's grunting, but dynamic, Creature. See it in theaters now and, after you do, take a look at other teen horror movies like it.
