A Monster Mash Without the Mash
Let’s start with the title, because that’s the only part that makes sense. Army of Frankensteins sounds like it should be a glorious B-movie romp — hordes of stitched-together monsters tearing through the Civil War like undead tourists on a historical reenactment gone horribly right. Instead, we get a time-traveling grocery clerk, a child genius named Igor, and more subplots than a late-season soap opera.
Directed, written, and — I suspect — emotionally held hostage by Ryan Bellgardt, this 2014 “science fiction horror” film is proof that no one ever stopped to ask why. Why mix Frankenstein with Abraham Lincoln? Why put a reanimated monster in a hot air balloon? Why does this movie exist? These are questions best left to theologians.
The Plot: A Civil War Between Logic and Coherence
Alan Jones (Jordan Farris) is a grocery store clerk whose biggest problem — until the movie starts — is that his girlfriend kissed his boss. That’s sad, but not quite “lose an eyeball to a science experiment” sad, which is what happens next. He’s kidnapped by a child prodigy named Igor and his mad-scientist boss Dr. Tanner Finski, who promptly remove one of Alan’s eyes to install in their pet Frankenstein monster. Because apparently consent and anesthesia were also casualties of the Enlightenment.
A lightning bolt hits the lab, as it always does, and suddenly Alan, Igor, the monster, and enough loose electrical charges to power a city are sucked into a portal and spat out in 1865 — right in the middle of the American Civil War.
The Frankensteins (plural, because the film multiplies them like horror-themed rabbits) immediately start murdering both Union and Confederate soldiers. The time travelers then meet Alan’s ancestor Solomon Jones, a noble soldier whose job is to remind us that even in the 19th century, no one knew what was going on. From here, the movie starts juggling more nonsense than a caffeinated juggler:
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There’s a Confederate cat injected with super-serum who turns into a monster.
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Frankenstein learns about slavery and becomes woke.
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Abraham Lincoln makes a cameo that somehow feels more wooden than the doll from Annabelle.
It’s a movie that wants to say something profound about freedom, war, and humanity — but ends up saying, “We had access to green screen software and we’re not afraid to use it.”
The Production: Budget? What Budget?
The film reportedly had a budget roughly equivalent to the catering bill on Avengers: Endgame. Every dollar shows — mostly because it’s stretched so thin you can see the pixels. The visual effects look like they were rendered on a 2006 laptop running Windows Vista. The CGI portal resembles a cosmic toilet flushing time travelers into the past.
Every explosion is a cartoon pop, every monster looks like a paper mâché science project, and every gunshot sounds like someone slapping a desk. There’s a valiant attempt at Civil War authenticity — but when your extras are wearing Spirit Halloween uniforms and Converse sneakers, historical accuracy takes a backseat to survival.
The cinematography is equally confused. Scenes are either drenched in neon blue light, as if everyone’s trapped inside a malfunctioning aquarium, or filmed so dark you wonder if the monsters forgot to pay the electric bill.
The Acting: Dead on Arrival
Jordan Farris plays Alan Jones with the charisma of a man waiting in line at the DMV. His facial expressions range from “mild confusion” to “slightly more confused.” When he learns he’s lost an eye, he reacts like someone who’s just misplaced a contact lens.
Eric Berger’s Frankenstein is basically a large man in rubber scars who grunts, growls, and occasionally gazes into the middle distance like he’s wondering if this paycheck will clear. To his credit, his performance improves once you realize the monster probably is smarter than everyone else in the movie.
Raychelle McDonald as Virginia tries her best to bring humanity to the chaos, but the dialogue she’s given could make Shakespeare weep. Lines like “Frankenstein, we’re fighting for freedom!” land with all the emotional subtlety of a marching band playing through a funeral.
The rest of the cast acts like they’re not entirely sure whether they’re in a comedy, a tragedy, or a hostage situation. Abraham Lincoln’s cameo is particularly memorable — not because it’s good, but because Honest Abe looks like he wandered in from a wax museum after hours.
The Script: History Rewritten by a Lunatic
If Army of Frankensteins has a script, it’s hidden somewhere under the debris of its own ambition. The movie throws everything at the wall: science experiments, time travel, cloning, racial commentary, romance, political conspiracy, and yes — John Wilkes Booth. Because apparently no Civil War film is complete without a casual assassination subplot involving multiple Frankensteins.
By the final act, we have an army of monsters, a Confederate super-soldier, Abraham Lincoln falling off a balcony, and the titular creature literally landing on him. It’s as if Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Mary Shelley’s Frankensteinhad a baby during a thunderstorm, and that baby was raised by people who hate logic.
The dialogue doesn’t help. At one point, a soldier solemnly announces, “We’ll need to fight fire with Frankenstein.” That’s the kind of line that deserves to be preserved in the Smithsonian — under “Unintentional Comedy.”
The Tone: Patriotic Pulp Fever Dream
To its credit, the movie does seem aware of how ridiculous it is — but not nearly enough. It teeters between self-parody and sincerity like a drunk on a tightrope. One moment, we’re treated to a heartfelt monologue about the horrors of slavery. The next, Frankenstein is in a hot air balloon discussing freedom like a green-skinned Oprah.
By the time the Frankensteins start helping the Union army, it’s impossible to tell if the film is pro-abolition, anti-science, or just pro-chaos. It’s a fever dream of bad ideas stitched together by sheer audacity.
The Soundtrack: March of the MIDI
The score sounds like someone downloaded “Epic Battle Music” from a royalty-free website and hit “loop.” Every scene is underscored by the same overdramatic brass section desperately trying to convince you something important is happening. Spoiler: it’s not.
The sound mixing, meanwhile, makes dialogue and explosions compete for dominance. Often, the music wins. Probably out of mercy.
The Message: When in Doubt, Add More Frankensteins
There’s a kernel of something admirable buried in all this madness. The idea of recontextualizing Frankenstein’s monster as a misunderstood creature fighting against oppression could’ve been fascinating — if handled with subtlety and craftsmanship. Instead, we get a carnival ride through historical absurdity, where every moral point is delivered by a man covered in glue-on stitches.
Even the title promise — Army of Frankensteins — feels misleading. We don’t see a true army until the last ten minutes, and even then, half of them look like they’re on break from a community theater production of Young Frankenstein.
The Ending: Abe Lincoln vs. Gravity
The finale is pure cinematic delirium. Frankenstein takes a bullet meant for Lincoln, topples off the balcony, and crushes the President beneath his enormous corpse. It’s like a Looney Tunes sketch gone rogue. Somewhere, Daniel Day-Lewis just dropped his Oscar and whispered, “For this?”
Alan goes back to the present, punches his boss, and proposes to his girlfriend, who sensibly refuses. Then he notices Frankenstein’s face on a five-dollar bill — because apparently, history decided that replacing Lincoln with a corpse was the right move.
It’s the perfect ending to a movie that never once asked if it should exist.
Final Verdict: The North Won, but Cinema Lost
Army of Frankensteins isn’t just bad — it’s creatively catastrophic. It’s what happens when someone watches Back to the Future, Frankenstein, and a History Channel reenactment marathon in one sitting and says, “I can fix that.”
Yet, in a perverse way, it’s almost admirable. You have to respect a film that’s this confidently wrong. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a science fair project that explodes, catches fire, and still wins “Most Enthusiastic.”
★☆☆☆☆ (1 out of 5)
Army of Frankensteins is a Civil War of bad ideas where everyone loses — especially the audience. The only thing resurrected here is your will to never time-travel again.
