Frankenstein’s Army, 2013.
Directed by Richard Raaphorst.
Starring Karel Roden, Joshua Sasse, Robert Gwilym, Alexander Mercury, Luke Newberry, Hon Ping Tang, Andrei Zayats, and Mark Stevenson.
SYNOPSIS:
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
It takes a certain amount of talent, creativity and genius to make a found footage set at the tail end of World War II, and first time feature director Richard Raaphorst has accomplished just that with Frankenstein’s Army.
The story centres around a group of Russian soldiers who are being followed by documentarian Dimitri (Alexander Murphy) as they stumble upon a Nazi base with strange, sewn-together super-soldiers created by the grandson of Victor Frankenstein. As the terror escalates, true colours are shown and alliances are formed and broken.
Raaphorst deserves a lot of credit for using the found footage medium to its full potential. He goes the extra mile to ensure that the film, though shot on digital, looks like it was filmed on a 1940s camera. Different lenses flip down to zoom in on particular details and the film stock often grains out or flushes down the right hand side and its these little touches that makes Frankenstein’s Army feel genuine – something the sub-genre sorely lacks. As the soldiers delve further and further into Frankenstein’s laboratory, Frankenstein’s Army starts to feel like a first person survival horror video game, creating an uneasy atmosphere that grips hold of its audience.
Usually there is scope to complain about found footage being used as a cheap format to get round possible production issues and often you find that a movie would have been better had it been shot as a regular movie (Chronicle for example). But Frankenstein’s Army justifies its use during the films documentary style conclusion that takes the film to another level. While certainly slowing the movie’s visceral pace to a slow crawl, it adds a lot of character depth and allows Karel Roden to shine as the mad scientist.
In an interview conducted by Flickering Myth, Raaphorst said that he wanted to use the medium not to shy away from his creatures, but to show them off in more detail. The creatures he speaks of are one of the main reasons Frankenstein’s Army works so well. Each one of them has been designed with a massive amount of detail to create a cyberpunk machine army that looks to have taken some inspiration from the likes of Clive Barker. Like a villain in a slasher movie, the creatures are the true star of Frankenstein’s Army and they are a fantastic series of monsters with some brilliantly unique designs. If there is one movie this year that demands a line of action figures, it’s Frankenstein’s Army.
Brilliantly shot, perfectly executed with some superb performances and mind bending visuals, Frankenstein’s Army is easily one of the best found footage movies ever made. As soon as the credits roll you’ll want to go back and watch it again just to see more of Raaphorst’s genius designs and the movie is the perfect example of how the sub-genre can be effective.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★
Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of Flickering Myth’s Podcast Network. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Originally published August 25, 2013. Updated November 7, 2019.
