Too much of everything

Let's be realistic.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Though not typically a "found footage" fan, this was one exception, because it lends to the horrific and claustrophobic feel of the film.This is top-notch, step above B-Movie horror for the costume and creature design alone. Highly recommended genre film, and one of the better to come out of the horror genre in some time.

Me and my son watched the trailer of this movie when watching the third season of The Walking Dead. The trailer looked quite cool so I decided to get it. Maybe I should hesitated a bit when I saw that it was really cheap on Amazon but I thought, what the heck, it is cheap and horror movies do not seem to have that big an audience these days. Well, unfortunately, the cheap price was well merited.I guess one good thing one can say about this movie is that the producer had tried to make it a bit original. Unfortunately it did not work for me. I have never really liked these handy-cam movies where all the scenes are jumping around. This one tried to be a bit original in that it was simulating being made by an old-fashioned world war II film camera instead of a handy-cam. I am afraid that it did not really make it any better as far as I am concerned. It just added a few scrapes and the occasional end of the film reel effect every so often. Usually when something gory was about to happen.Speaking of gory. The movie was not really that gory unless you count a lot of body parts being strewn around the scenes. Plenty of the, supposedly, gory parts was just silly, possibly supposed to be comical, but mostly just really silly. The part where the mad "genious" was grafting to brain parts, one Nazi and one communist, together was just ludicrous and sad.The blurb claims this was supposed to be Hitler's last ghastly attempt to win the war but in the movie it seemed little more than some crazy guys drug induced dream. The main adversary failed completely in projecting any form of "genius" image and there certainly did not seem to be any support from the Nazi regime.To make matters worse there was really not a single likable person in the movie. All the characters where either just filler characters, crazy people, real assholes or some mixture of said traits.I am afraid that I had to force myself to watch this movie to the end.

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.

This is a found footage indie horror film about a group of Russian soldiers on a mission in Germany during the last days of World War II. Believing themselves to be on a mission to rescue a group of fellow soldiers, things start turning weird when they discover the skeleton of a "something. Soon they encounter a pile of burnt nuns and believe it to be the work of those evil Nazis. Nothing would prepare them for what they are about to encounter, though, as they find the lair of a mad scientist who's been creating an army of bio-mechanical monsters for the Nazi regime. All of this is filmed by one of the Russians, who is supposed to be capturing events for propaganda production.Many people complain about the found footage aspect, but I'm not going to waste my time on that. Look people, if you know a movie is found footage going into it and you know you hate that style, just don't watch it. Why go to an Italian restaurant, then complain that they served Italian food if you know what I mean? The style is not going to go away and it's an effective tool for low-budget horror directors, so get used to it.Clearly, the strength of this movie is the creature designs. The monsters created by Dr. Frankenstein are simply amazing. Each one is completely unique, with its' own look and weapons, coming across as the hellish hybrid of Clive Barker and Silent Hill. The movie never really establishes any real atmosphere or scares, but does carry with it a very nightmarish quality due to these monsters. Where some movies would be content to make them all similar this movie really unravels like a nightmare, as each monster is more horrifying than the last.The problem with this movie is a real lack of plot or momentum. The beginning of the movie is fairly forgettable, giving us random sequences of soldiers trooping through towns or woods. Occasionally, they encounter something bizarre, but these events never really build any mood. The director misses a real chance to create a feeling that something ominous is coming. Instead, it feels like a generic war movie that suddenly changes gears without warning.Once the soldiers enter the bunker of Dr. Frankenstein, the monsters revealing themselves. At this point, the movie really starts to feel like a walk through a haunted house attraction to me. There is little dialog beyond "look behind you, aaaiiieee". There is no real plot development going on. There is no gradual establishment of atmosphere. The found footage aspect does not help this, either, because the camera is very often one angle, one perspective. The end result is that it truly feels like you are the viewer walking through a scary theme park attraction. Each corner and turn reveals a new scene, or a new monster, all of which are impressive, but you never feel that there's a connection from scene to scene, it's just moving on from one to the other. Many have compared this to a first-person shooter game, which would, also, be an apt comparison. Even when we finally meet the doctor, this trend continues. There is a little exposition into why or how he is doing these things, but it generally only serves to continue this trend of cutting from one monster scene to another, with little to connect them.There is a review on RogerEbert.com which states that this movie feels more like a promo reel than a finished product and it's true. It's almost like the creature designers sent a production company this reel with the intention of "look at these creatures we've designed for a potential movie", then someone just tacked on a beginning and said "that's a wrap, release it". As an advertisement for what this creature efx company is capable of doing, it's impressive. As a movie, it leaves a lot to be desired.