To put it delicately, “Lisa Frankenstein,” a new high school romance about an aspiring goth poetess who falls for a long-dead teen with dash and 1830s sideburn, doesn’t play.

A campy, bloody rom-com spin on a “Warm Bodies” theme, it manages a moment, here and there and just a hint of who screenwriter/genuine “character” Diablo Cody (“Juno,” “Young Adult,””Jennifer’s Body”) once was.

Indelicately put, it’s tin-eared evidence that the sparkling, edgy, Oscar-winning wit who wrote “Juno” got old. Not “old” old, but 45-is-too-old-to-be-scripting-teen-comedies old.

Nobody told Cody a 1989 period piece about a magically-animated corpse, who can’t talk until it’s too late, peppered with ’80s pop, quirky ’80s cars and struggling attempts at ’80s slang wouldn’t work. So the fool rushed in where wiser writers with and without Oscars fear to tread.

It’s a star vehicle for “Ant Man’s” Kathryn Newton, who wears Madonna Wannabe-wear and lots of Goth makeup and strains to find laughs when the screenplay cannot provide them.

Lisa is our teen scream queen, the “smart one” in a newly-formed family that includes a judgmental, figurine-collecting step-mom (Carla Gugino, not bad), the best dad the budget would allow (Joe Chrest, at least he looks like a “Dale”), and a pretty/vapid/dumb cheerleader sister named Taffy (Liza Soberano).

Taffy likes hunks, and is puzzled to hear Lisa is into the dreamboth editor of the school “lit(erary) mag,” Michael Trent (Henry Eikenberry).

“He doesn’t play sports. He’s cerebral.”

“He’s in a wheelchair?”

There’s a lot of Diablo dialogue like that, a little of which is cute, a lot of which just isn’t.

Cole Sprouse plays the soulful statue in an abandoned (Louisiana) cemetery whom Lisa pines over until that fateful day something brings the pre-Emancipation young gent back to life.

Cody and actress-turned-director Zelda Williams (“Kappa Kappa Die”) wring a laugh out of our accomplished young Southern gentleman showing off at the keyboard, sight-reading a tune that Lisa knows and sings by heart.

REO Speedwagon never sounded so…Antebellum. Newton sings just like an enthusiastic but almost tone-deaf teen, which adds to its charm.

But the killings that follow, the bodies that must be disposed of and lack of anything like chemistry between our lead characters (it’s the writing, not the acting) fail to deliver anything remotely resembling a story that needed telling or a movie one feels the need to stay through to the bitter — and I do mean bitter — end.

Rating: PG-13 for violent content, bloody images, sexual material, language, sexual assault, teen drinking and drug content.

Cast: Kathryn Newton, Liza Soberano, Cole Sprouse, Henry Eikenberry and Carla Gugino.

Credits: Directed by Zelda Williams, scripted by Diablo Cody. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:41