I thought I saw an awful found footage Frankenstein movie this year when I saw The Frankenstein Theory six weeks ago. Now I can say I’ve seen worse, Frankenstein’s Army.
In the final days of World War II, a Soviet regiment is tasked with finding a large number of Soviet troops who disappeared. As they search they come across many unsettling things, like dug up graves and piles of dead nuns. They eventually discover that they are actually searching for Viktor Frankenstein, who has been conducting horrible experiments with the undead, creating animal/machine hybrids like something out of Doom. Actually, they sort of look like what Edward Scissorhands might look like in your worst nightmares, making the creature design the best part of the film. Anyway, the Soviet troops have to avoid these creatures and their buzzsaw, powerdrill, and machete limbs as they discover the truth of Viktor’s experiments.
But as I said, this is a found footage movie, and is shot in color with sound. Often the cameraman uses his hands so the camera does not require cranking. Let’s think about the cameras that existed in 1945: sure, some could shoot in color, some could shoot with sound, and some could work without being cranked, but there were no handheld cameras in 1945 that could do all of this. Sometimes we hear the camera cranking, other times we don’t, which is a major inconsistency. Also, keep in mind that the cameraman would likely have had to carry hundreds, if not thousands, feet of film to shoot this much footage. At one point a German prisoner points out that he’s never seen a camera like theirs before to sort of suggest it is some Soviet secret camera, but it’s still ridiculous.
So you think I’m nitpicking about the camera? Okay, that’s fair. How do you feel about all the Soviet troops speaking English? Because they do. So do the Germans. In fact, I cracked up when the Soviet troops ambush a German and have to ask the cameraman to “translate” for the German… even though they are all speaking English!
Okay, so if you chose to ignore the camera and linguistic issues, what you end up with is a below-average found footage horror film which leads up to the cameraman meeting Viktor Frankenstein himself. Frankenstein is portrayed by Karel Roden at his most insane. He plays Frankenstein like the Willy Wonka of body parts as he chews the scenery with a current-day Al Pacino growl (with an inconsistent accent). Besides his performance — he’s clearly having fun — the movie is just a terrible execution of a “been there, done that” idea (Dr. Frankenstein working with the Nazis). We get to the point in which writers Chris W. Mitchell, Richard Raaphorst, and Miguel Tejada-Flores are just introducing characters to shortly afterward kill them off with various creatures, including one with an airplane propeller welded to its head.
Director Richard Raaphorst has had a long career as an artist in film, so while Frankenstein’s Army has plenty of visual flair it’s not enough to make this a good movie, even with Roden doing his damnedest to make it fun. This movie sinks the found footage genre to even deeper fathoms. I hope Raaphorst keeps designing creatures for movies, but I think he’s in over his head as a director — at least on this film.
RATING: Excellent design work doesn’t make this ridiculously silly film worth seeing (1.5/10).
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