Frankenstein’s Army: “Writing”? What’s That?

Upon watching Frankenstein’s Army, my first impression was that the filmmakers had accidentally chosen the wrong medium. Any real writer will tell you that there are specific mediums appropriate to the type of story one is telling. Sometimes, if the story in a writer’s head is visual and compelling, well then that’s a movie. Sometimes the writer must convey a character’s idiosyncratic personal reactions to an exterior world—this type of story is best left to novels or short stories. Cinematic attempts at such stories can go overboard on the metaphorical in order to visually capture the intricate subjectivity, thus losing the audience entirely. Frankenstein’s Army is neither of the above described stories. It could have been, but its narrative execution was far too vacuous for either of those to fit. Instead it is an empty story. All of it is empty, as if it is waiting for someone to fill its characters and objectives with meaning. There is a medium specific to that type of emptiness, can you guess which one it is?

This film starts out by showing a group of Russian soldiers marching through near empty wilderness. It is vaguely established that they are on their way to kick some Nazi butt, and they have several cameras with them in order to capture their heroic tour along the way. I’m sure each of the soldiers were supposed to have specific traits that would create a subtle interplay among their interpersonal dynamic as the story continued on, but the writer either wasn’t talented enough to pull this off, or was ignored by the director and producers once filming started. Instead we have a homogenized set of men in a standard homogenized “stuck in this war” scenario. The concept that the film we are watching is from footage found from these very same cameras, likely abandoned after whatever events took place—well, this concept is cute, but doesn’t really aid the narrative.

It is a sloooow opening, and while things do pick up later on in the story, all the slowness that should have been spent establishing empathetic characters simply went to being slow. Any character development that did occur made sure to establish that these soldiers were stupid, mean-hearted, fearful, and at times, rapey. Thus when things actually start happening later on, we don’t care. We don’t care because little work went into them, and also because the little work that was done established these characters as useless assholes. The most interesting of them was the first one to die. Note to all screenwriters—don’t kill off your most interesting character first and leave your audience with a bunch of half-forms. It’s rude.

Visually this movie wasn’t bad. It looked like a majority of the budget went to production design and special effects. Specifically because of this, I thought I ought to mention a little note to all filmmakers—production design and special effects cannot save a shitty story. I would have rather sat through a crappy looking movie that engages as opposed to this shiny beast of a thing.

Once we actually get to see the various members of Frankenstein’s Army (which takes forever to get to, by the way), some of the costume design choices seemed to be inspired by the video game monsters from Silent Hill and from BioShock. I found this visually appealing, but more on an academic level as opposed to a visceral one—which is a pretty crappy experience considering this film is listed in the horror genre. Honestly. I am a scaredy-cat. I still refuse to watch Saw on principle, Nightmare on Elm Street still freaks me out, and I had to leave the theater while watching M. Knight Shamalamadingdong’s The Happening because I became so terrified of the trees that I became physically nauseated. Yet, I had no problem watching and rolling my eyes through the entirety of Frankenstein’s Army.

So what is the moral here? Spend more money and time on writers and actors than on equipment and doodads. Also, when writing a scary movie, invest your audience in the characters so that their imminent danger, once it finally happens, is actually something to give a shit about. And this is what I meant about the incorrect medium choice. The emptiness and blandness of characters and events with all the mindless “oh my god, it’s weird and coming this way, kill it!” moments make this particular story ripe for production in the video game field. You don’t need characters that exhibit super-strong traits from the get-go since the player can create and bolster an empty vessel that has been waiting for her or him to fill its shoes. In fact, I imagine an overly strong character in a video game medium may actually counteract the player in an unpleasant way. So be sure to do your writerly research on mediums before selecting, and avoid watching Frankenstein’s Army.