This movie would have defined me if I could have seen it in high school. Nerd girl obsessed with old movies too shy to be one of the goths, with a crush on a poetic guy too cool for her, but she'll meet the right undead boy someday? I would have built my new self image around it.
It's very clearly trying to be early (good) era Tim Burton with the grotesque suburban aesthetic, harkening back to the eighties the way he did to the fifties
There's some thesis in here about how the female outsider in these movies always has to be conventionally attractive and the kind of person who could be accepted under the right circumstances, but that's a lot of weight to hang on one movie
I described the plot to my husband as "She's trying to collect body parts to help build her undead boyfriend a body." "Like Hellraiser?" he asked, and huh. Yeah. A lot like Hellraiser.
I want someone to draw a pic or write a fan fic that has Kathryn Newton's characters Millie, Lisa Swallows and Sammy from Freaky (Millie), Lisa Frankenstein (Lisa Swallows) and Abigail (Sammy) meeting.