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Frankenstein's Army
Toward the end of World War II, Russian soldiers pushing into eastern Germany stumble across a secret Nazi lab, one that has unearthed and begun experimenting with the journal of one Dr. Victor Frankenstein. The scientists have used the legendary Frankenstein's work to assemble an army of super-soldiers stitched together from the body parts of their fallen comrades -- a desperate Hitler's last ghastly ploy to escape defeat
Release : | 2013 |
Rating : | 5.4 |
Studio : | Dark Sky Films, XYZ Films, Pellicola, |
Crew : | Production Design, Director of Photography, |
Cast : | Karel Roden Joshua Sasse Robert Gwilym Alexander Mercury Luke Newberry |
Genre : | Horror Action |
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Don't listen to the negative reviews
Better Late Then Never
It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.
This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.
I would highly recommend never watching this film as a film, but rather simply leaving it on in the background as you're doing something else. The sets, costumes, and monsters are fantastic. Save for a few odd ones, the quality is consistently high and set dressing and effects are executed by someone with an eye for detail.On the other hand, the acting is atrocious- accents are inconsistent, the comedy isn't quite funny enough and the horror is ruined by the use of unbelievable leaps of emotion that scream artificial.The way the film was produced isn't that great either. The use of found footage hurts the film more than helps it in terms of story telling, the mixing of psychopathic characters and basic "scared kids" and heroic tropes leads to inconsistent mood, and most of the shots are distracting rather than focusing. A lot of scenes don't focus enough on the horror aspect but stick too long on the action and dwell too long on basic things like tripping in the mud or stomping through the forest in a way that doesn't advance the story at all.Reasons to still have the film playing at all? Monsters are great, design is creative, atmosphere and level of grit are appropriate, basic premise is entertaining.
We put it on expecting it to be cheesy, but eh, give it a try. My husband and I were pleasantly surprised, in fact, delighted! We are even going to watch it again. There are so many subtle details and things in the background or aren't directly addressed. The characters are believable, and the costuming is FANTASTIC! Sure somethings are a bit over the top but I don't think it took away from the movie but actually part of the charm. It's all shot 'Blair Witch' style, POV of a camera carried by the character(s). While I wouldn't call it terrifying, it was scary and got that adrenaline pumping, and usually we're stoic movie watchers but even we had to do the tentative 'oooooo' and those little spazs you do when a character needs to do something - which, a huge credit to this movie, is not full of idiot characters you yell at the screen for being an idiot. What an enjoyable ride.
The idea of Dr. Frankenstein making an army of cybernetic monster soldiers is extremely awesome and unique idea and I was expecting something like a campy gore fest like "Dead Snow" but I got a tedious found footage film from the point of a view of a bunch of unlikeable Russian soldiers who you just can't wait to all die in a brutal fashion. And judging by the title and DVD cover art, I was expecting Frankenstein to be the main character but he's only in the film for about 20 minutes. The only major positive things that I got to say about the film is that the special effects are fantastic, the monsters and robots are unique and the way Dr. Frankenstein was handled and portrayed during the final half of the film was fairly good. When all is said and done, I felt like this should have been an action horror comedy with the point of view from Dr. Frankenstein and it would have made the film 10 times better but that's just how I feel.
Everything about Frankenstein's Army is a bit of a strange Hodge Podge of things that don't normally fit together. Lets start with the fact that the film itself is billed as a Dutch-American-Czech film, that in itself says strange things and definitely worked to pique my curiosity, as strange is often under rated as far as I'm concerned. One other thing that caught my attention with this one was the art attached to it. Sometimes we tend to take it for granted how much the poster art on any particular film colors or perception of what it may be and whether it would be worth our investment in time or money. So with so many various points pushing me towards the play button I gave in, I mean really we all know it was just a matter of time before I lost the battle anyway!The setting is WWII, and we have an elite recon unit of Russian soldiers who are making their way across the countryside, occasionally coming across some very unusual corpses. These corpse don't appear to be entirely human nor do they appear to be anything actually know to the men. War makes the nerves sketchy enough with out strange half man half something else sparking corpses showing up. Anyway I digress, our band of soldiers receive a distress call from another platoon, so our hero's rush off in aid of their comrades.While searching for their "boys" they come across a farm house, where they make the acquaintance of a German going about feeding some of the animals. (Now I should not have to tell you buuuuuuttt just in case you slept through history, the Germans were the primary enemy of WWII). They try to get info out of him in regards to the whereabouts of their fellow countryman, to no avail. After a bit of torture the German offers to take them to where they boys are, which is where things get really strange...Frankenstein's Army is a hard one to review for me because on one hand its really kind of awesome, but on the other its really not! I find myself both loving and hating it at the same time, and my viewing buddy had much the same reaction to the film. So I guess to be fair I need to speak about both sides.Some of this movie is really very successful. The story itself is fairly simple, war torn land, soldiers trying to find and rescue their comrades, and evil mad Scientist bent on finding his own solution to the raging war, fairly straight forward. Granted there are a few twist and turns I haven't expressed, but as always I do my best not to give everything away,because wheres the fun in that? The film also has some honestly creepy moments in way of visuals. The monsters that make up the Dr's.Army are awesome. Easily some of the most diverse and interesting creature I have seen in some time, and really well executed. It also has some nicely done gore effects, that work well with-in the story line and don't go overboard, which would have been easy to do in this kind of context. The film also has almost a classic feel to it, it looks aged making you feel like your watching something that would have come out in the 60s or 70s era. All of those things are really fantastic about this one.Now onto the other side, what didn't work for me in this film. The biggest singular problem in this one is that its another in the long line of Found Footage genre, which works for some things but not this one. It starts out with a bit of promise with the quality and colors of the film appearing to be what you would expect from the time period. However as it moves forward the found footage concept losses something in the translation and just doesn't at all fit. This film could have been hugely successful had they just filmed it as a straight forward film, instead of trying force it forward as found footage. It has some other slight issues here and there but they are pretty inconsequential in comparison.This is a film that would have been almost guaranteed cult film status if it had been filmed differently. It could still garner a strong following, for no other reason than the Mad Doctors creations which make the film worth watching for sure. Its just difficult to fully engage in this one, I found it impossible to really stay focused on the film, so take a word of advice, before you pop this one on. Make sure all shiny things are removed from view or you may notice a twinkle out of the corner of your eye and be pulled away completely for a few!!! *HeatherOmen* TheHorrorNation.net