This Is Horror

FrightFest 2013 Film Review: Frankenstein’s Army

“A whacky film that makes very little sense and somehow succeeds!”

What this film lacks in plot it makes up for in bizarre ingenuity. Essentially a found-footage film set at the end of WWII, Frankenstein’s Army sees a battalion of Russian soldiers stumble upon a Nazi laboratory filled with nightmarish monsters created and constructed from the body parts of fallen comrades. It’s difficult to classify such a whacky film, but Richard Raaphorst has done a great job in making a fun, extreme found-footage movie that makes very little sense and yet somehow succeeds.

ADAM MILLARD

Second opinion

How do I describe this one? If there was one film in the festival made for me this would have to be it, and I spent most of the running time on tentertooks, unable to believe it could get any crazier or more outrageous. It’s a Russian found-footage movie set in World War II in which a squad of soldiers come across an enormous laboratory in which the descendant of Dr Victor Frankenstein has been creating war machines out of metal and human body parts. Somewhat video gamey but in all the right ways for a change, Frankenstein’s Army really kicks into high gear when we’re given a tour of the mad doctor’s laboratory. The monsters are superb, the direction is frenetic without being nauseating (are you listening Adam Wingard?) and the torture scenes are just the right side of Saw and Hostel. The one film I absolutely cannot wait to see again.

JOHN LLEWELLYN PROBERT

Director: Richard Raaphorst
Starring: Karel Roden, Joshua Sasse, Robert Gwilym
Certificate: 18
Running time: 84 minutes
FrightFest Screening: 24 August 2013

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