Jun 282013
 

Nazis make the best movie villains; that’s something almost everybody can agree on.  Officious, racist bureaucrat-soldiers with a fevered devotion to a pseudo-mystical ideology are perfect fodder for the “stock bad guy” role, and it helps that for half a century the vast majority of cinema-goers have been raised to instinctively hate them.  The fact that the Third Reich had a well-publicised fascination with advanced technology, medical experiments and the occult also makes them more credible antagonists in a supernatural and/or science-fictional context, a fact picked up on by the writers behind a slew of recent films like Outpost (2008), Dead Snow (2009) and Iron Sky (2012).  Frankenstein’s Army is the latest addition to the ever-growing “Nazi sci-fi” subgenre, whose unique twist on the format is its connection to a classic piece of fiction, namely Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.  In a crossover so brilliant that it’s hard to believe no-one has thought of it before, the film has Victor Frankenstein’s grandson recruited by the Nazis for the purpose of creating a deadly new kind of soldier using updated versions of his grandfather’s experiments.  The gruesome results form the centrepiece of the movie, and any horror fan who loves oodles of gore and top-notch creature designs will not be disappointed.

As the second world war reaches its conclusion, a squad of Russian soldiers pushing through Germany follows a distress call to a seemingly deserted mining village.  After stumbling across a number of horrific sights including mutilated corpses and a pile of burned nuns, the squad’s commander is killed by a strange creature they encounter in the local church.  In an effort to determine what is really going on, the men make their way into the catacombs beneath the village, and it is here that they encounter the army of terrifying man/machine hybrids built by Dr Frankenstein (Karel Roden), an army against whom they seem to have no chance of survival.  The action is captured entirely by the camera of a propagandist film-maker travelling with the soldiers, meaning that the film sits very much in the “found footage” subgenre of horror cinema, but this limited point of view doesn’t detract from the experience, and in some ways actually enhances the sense of foreboding which permeates the entire movie.

Unlike a great deal of modern horror cinema, Frankenstein’s Army eschews cheap jump-scares in favour of a creeping unease leading to an explosion of action and gore, as the film becomes a showcase for the stunning and horrific creature designs of Dutch director Richard Raaphorst.  If anything, it actually betrays the influence of classic monster movies like Frankenstein and Creature from the Black Lagoon, albeit with a more modern sensibility.  The titular army is a parade of steampunk cyborg terrors, and to see such meticulously designed and constructed monstrosities in the era of CGI is an utter joy.  They really are the best reason to see Frankenstein’s Army, although it also has other qualities in abundance.  The gruelling body horror of the film’s final third is intense, but a healthy dose of black humour is always mixed in to mitigate the more gratuitous scenes, not least in the form of Dr Frankenstein himself.  Karel Roden clearly has a ball playing the demented scientist, and though the character could have easily swerved into movie cliche territory, he proves himself to be one of the film’s most interesting elements.  Frankenstein’s conviction that his experiments could actually end the war and lead to some sort of harmony between Fascists and Communists suggests a loftier – if no less deranged – motivation than simple (and morbid) scientific curiosity.  It’s interesting to note that the Doctor does not appear to share the racist worldview of the regime that has employed him, while the Russian “liberators” who claim to hate Nazism show themselves to have an antisemitic streak.  We’re all the same, it seems, to a man who merely likes to chop up brains and reanimate corpses.

With sophisticated character moments like these, it’s hard not to suspect that Raaphorst wants to make a more meaningful statement with the film, possibly about the hidden horrors of war that lurk beneath ideology and flag-waving.  The visual resemblance which Frankenstein’s killing floor bears to the entrance of Auschwitz-Birkenau cannot be accidental, nor the fact that Frankenstein himself is revealed to have spent time in a Nazi death camp.  Expressing an implied socio-political commentary is almost de rigueur in the world of cult horror movies, and it’s clear that Raaphorst is striving for inclusion in such hallowed company.  But Frankenstein’s Army mightfall short of true cult classic status, undermined as it is by a number of flaws.  The film suffers from the key weakness of many “found footage” movies, namely that instead of making the ordinary scary, it can sometimes just make the scary ordinary.  The rough and ready shooting style makes it difficult at times to suspend disbelief, and occasionally the viewer becomes uncomfortably aware that what they’re watching is just a bunch of actors in costume.  What’s more, Frankenstein’s Army could have been a bit more…well…scary.  As much as I usually find horror films to be an endurance test, here I found myself actually wishing for more scares, although this was perhaps due to misguided expectations of the film on my part.  Finally, Raaphorst seems unsure as to what sort of a horror film he actually wantedto make with Frankenstein’s Army; at different points the movie seems to be a suspense thriller, an action movie, a spooky creature-feature and borderline torture-porn.  It’s not impossible for a film to knit such disparate elements together in a coherent way, but here it’s been done in a somewhat disjointed manner.  That said, if the structure of the film itself is some sort of meta-joke by Raaphorst about the construction of Frankenstein’s monster then I doff my cap to him.  Unfortunately, this seems unlikely.

Frankenstein’s Army, then,is a tremendous amount of fun.  Its black humour, wonderful monster designs and sophisticated subtext are cloaked in bucket-loads of gore, and it manages to shock new life into what is becoming a rather hackneyed subgenre of modern horror cinema.  Don’t go in expecting a masterpiece, but as long as you’ve got a strong stomach you may well find it to be one of the year’s most enjoyable films.

Frankenstein’s Army has no official UK release date as of yet, but will hopefully receive a limited release over the summer.

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  One Response to “REVIEW: ‘Frankenstein’s Army’ (EIFF 2013)”

  1. Really appreciate you sharing this article. Much obliged.