14-year-old Lisa (Staci Keanan) is obsessed with meeting older men.
Lisa is able to disguise her voice to sound older over the phone, and maintains the rise of being an adult to entrance men.
When Lisa runs into a new neighbour (D.W. Moffett), she develops a crush and wants to add ‘Rick’ to her collection.
What she does not know is that ‘Rick’ is a serial killer and he is also anxious to add her to his…
A cautionary tale about adolescent sexuality, Lisa is a strange blend of thriller and teen movie, with a mistaken identity subplot straight out of a romantic comedy.
Co-written and directed by Gary Sherman (Deathline and Vice Squad), Lisa is currently his last feature film as a director.
The film’s politics are simplistic on the surface - a teenager follows her urges and almost gets herself and family killed.
As with Sherman’s other works (at least the ones I have seen), there are more complications to this reading.
There is a level of realism to the relationship between Lisa and her mother. While Lisa and her mother have an established Bond of trust and self-reliance. Maybe it is growing up with a single mother, but there is an ease to their relationship that feels real.
While the ending could be read as a punishment for Lisa’s lust, the film acknowledges the sense of power Lisa gains from her role-playing - while Lisa entertains dreams of her crushes, she keeps them locked away in a scrapbook, and at the other end of the phone line. While her friend keeps trying to hook her, Lisa still follows her mother’s rule of not dating until she is 16 years old.
Lisa is increasingly taken with how Richard responds to her over the phone - there is no implication that she wants to meet him in person. It is all about the confidence she gains from being at a remove.
Lisa remains completely unaware of the danger she is in until she decides to play matchmaker and set Rick up with her mother.
As a suspense picture, the film is effective - the scene where Lisa locks herself in Richard’s car has some good tension, and the finale in which Lisa and her mother battle Richard is brutal.
Most of the film’s tension comes from our awareness of Richard’s true nature, which lends the film a sense of dark irony as Lisa draws him in.
The film has the simple story logic of a fairy tale, and this extends to the way the killer’s modus operandi fits with Lisa’s romantic fantasies - he breaks into his victim’s houses, lays out candles etc to create a romantic setting, and leaves a message on their answering machine, which he then waits for them to check before attacking.
The film’s scope is small, and largely set in various interiors, but this is where Sherman’s gift for conveying meaning through mise-en-scene comes to the fore: for example, all we see of the killer’s home is an empty living room with a couple of leather chairs - it looks like a corporate waiting room rather than somewhere where a person would live.
The acting all around is solid. Cheryl Ladd is excellent as Lisa’s down-to-earth mother, and despite looking disconcertingly like Adam Scott, D.W. Moffett’s killer is effectively anonymous. Unlike most Hollywood portrayals of serial killers, his killer lacks any flare or personality - he is a handsome blank.
While its simplicity is compelling, there are moments where Lisa feels compressed and televisual - it is limited to a few locations, and the film’s cast of TV names makes the film feel slightly small.
It is not Sherman’s best outing as a director, but it is worth a look.
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