As a Midwestern boy myself, seeing a Midwestern horror movie, filmed in and around Kansas City and traveling all the way to the UK for FrightFest is a pretty exciting thing to see. And while I Am Lisa is a bit rough around the edges, I found myself oddly mesmerized by this micro-budget revenge tale for the most part.

In a brief cold open, a fanged woman runs through a forest before getting shot by Sheriff Deb Huckins (Manon Halliburton) who sighs, “I guess we gotta find another” to her partner-in-crime Dolphus (Shawn Eric Jones). After this full-moon set scene, we meet Lisa (Kristen Vaganos) who has returned to the small town of Northbrook after her grandmother passed away and left her an old used books store. As she opens her store, one of her returning customers named Mary (Cinnamon Schultz) drops by to pick up an old book on werewolves. Lisa mentions she read a little bit of the book but doesn’t believe in the supernatural.

“Maybe it’s just unexplained science,” Mary responds. As she leaves the store she runs into Jessica Huckins (Carmen Anello) and her group of mean girls, resulting in an altercation that continues when Jessica enters the store and outright steals a first edition copy of A Clockwork Orange from Lisa. That night, Lisa hangs out with her best friend Sam (Jennifer Seward) and complains over vegetarian pizza about how Jessica is able to get away with everything because her mother’s the sheriff. Additionally, if Sheriff Deb doesn’t do anything about a missing girl named Gretchen, why would she do anything about her own daughter’s theft?

Things get even more complicated when Jessica shows back up at the bookstore the next day, with the book. She tries to kiss Lisa and when Lisa rejects her, she spits in her face and makes a comment about tears giving her a hard-on...which is...an odd bit of dialogue. Long story short, Lisa goes to Sheriff Deb who diminishes everything Lisa tells her. “That’s not assault, it’s a kiss, dumb-dumb” she says, followed by “it’s not assault if nobody got hit.”

“You got that right, mom,” Deputy Nick Huckins (Chris Bylsma) parrots. And when Lisa mentions bringing it above Deb’s head, she gets viciously assaulted by Deb’s son Nick, daughter Jessica and Jessica’s girl posse. Dumped in the forest for the wolves to chew on, Lisa gets bitten and then rescued by Mary. And as Lisa quickly heals the physical wounds, the mental ones still chew on her brain and she eventually decides to take matters into her own hands.

Filmed on a shoestring budget, I Am Lisa bursts at the seam with directorial ambition from Patrick Rea. Lisa’s rise to being a werewolf feels a bit like a superhero origin story, filled with moments of levity and strangeness ranging from typical moments like wounds that miraculously heal or now-perfect vision to the ability to smell Sam’s last meal down to minute details (and that she’s ovulating). But more humorous scenes abound, such as when Sam almost hits a boy on a bike and when Lisa runs over to help him, she finds herself unable to resist a desire to lick his bloodied elbow. Or, in a pretty funny montage, the previous vegetarian buys steak after steak and pays for them while chewing on a dog biscuit, a “I give no shits” look in her glowering eyes as the customers balk.

The acting is a bit hit or miss, but Kristen Vaganos and Manon Halliburton both put in strong performances as Lisa and the brutal Sheriff. And while a lot of the werewolf effects are pretty muted because of budgetary constraints, it’s obvious the money went towards the practical effects as Lisa snaps, bites and fries her attackers. It’s all a little rough around the edges, but it’s incredibly watchable.

Unfortunately, the script by Eric Winkler doesn’t really present much new to either subgenre outside of merging the werewolf subgenre with a revenge film. The problem is that I Am Lisa opens strong with a pair of contrasting quotes about revenge that fail to set the stage for the narrative. The first, from Heinrich Heine reads, “We should forgiven our enemies, but not before they are hanged” which contrasts with Francis Bacon’s famous, “A person that studieth revenge keeps their own wounds green.”

When taken together, as an almost thesis to the proceeding film, I expected I Am Lisa to explore the nature of revenge. But outside of a couple throwaway lines like “This isn't you. Don’t stoop to their level,” the narrative is more concerned with Lisa’s quest for revenge and the conflicts hinted at by Francis Bacon never materialize. That said, I did enjoy the idea of a woman finding her own pack and setting out on their own...I just wish it were examined a bit more clearly or the script were more interested in actually exploring the themes it introduced.