| Director | Richard Raaphorst |
|---|---|
| Genre | action film, found footage, horror film, science fiction film, zombie film |
| Runtime | 84 min |
| Country | Netherlands, United States |
During the closing days of World War II, a Soviet reconnaissance team consisting of Novikov, Sergei, Vassili, Alexei, Ivan, Sacha, and Dmitri are on a mission to destroy a German sniper nest. After completing the objective, the squad receives a Soviet distress call that repeats without any response to their queries; at the same time, they lose radio contact with high command. Although the soldiers are skeptical of the presence of Soviet forces in the area, team leader Novikov orders them to investigate, and they encounter dead Nazis, a burned convent, and strange machinery along the way. When the soldiers arrive at their destination, they find an abandoned church where they accidentally activate a "zombot"—a reanimated corpse with mechanical implants fused onto its body. The zombot kills Novikov before being killed by the rest of the men and Sergei takes charge as the new team leader.
The soldiers see an elderly caretaker enter the church and ambush him. He is interrogated by Dmitri, who asks for the location of the stranded Soviet soldiers they heard on the radio. The caretaker insists that the village is abandoned, with everyone killed or scared off by the creatures created by "The Doctor", but Vassili becomes impatient and cuts off his finger. Coerced by the torture, the caretaker agrees to lead them to the source of the Soviet distress call, but instead leads them into a zombot trap where Ivan is mortally wounded. The squad manages to escape, and back at the church they encounter a group of German survivors—elderly Fritz, young boy Hans, and nurse Eva—that had been hiding from the zombots. Vassili suggests killing them, but Eva convinces the Russians to spare her and her fellow survivors by offering to help the wounded Ivan. When she is unable to save him and he dies of his injuries, Vassili knocks her unconscious. Suddenly, Alexei is ambushed and killed by a zombot as multiple of them enter the church and close in on the group.
The survivors manage to escape into the church's catacombs, where Sergei discovers that Dmitri has been deceiving the squad by using a radio jammer to both block contact with high command and transmit the fake distress call they received. Dmitri reveals that he has a secret mission from the Soviet government to capture or kill the Nazi scientist who created the zombots, and to document their mission in case they cannot capture him. Furious that they were deceived and led unprepared into this mission, Sergei and Vassili threaten to kill Dmitri, but he asserts his authority by revealing that he is a Captain in the Red Army, outranking both of them, and threatens their families with retribution if they disobey his orders. As Dmitri leads the group deeper into the catacombs, they encounter more zombots before reaching a chute leading into the factory. Sergei and Vassili force Hans to go down the chute to investigate and the boy is immediately killed by a zombot which then climbs up the chute and attacks the group; though they manage to destroy it, Fritz is killed in the struggle. Sergei, Vassili, and Sacha then stage a mutiny against Dmitri and throw him and his film equipment down the chute.
Unable to climb back up, Dmitri ventures deeper into the facility, where zombots capture him. The caretaker reveals himself to be Dr. Viktor Frankenstein, a descendant of Victor Frankenstein and creator of the zombots. He explains that he developed the creatures from his grandfather's research after breaking away from his Nazi superiors. Dmitri finds Hans transformed into a zombot and Sergei and Vassili held captive. As Soviet artillery approaches, Dmitri offers Frankenstein protection from the Soviet government, but Frankenstein instead demonstrates an experiment by transplanting half of a captured Nazi soldier's brain into Sergei with Eva's assistance. Frankenstein prepares to operate on Dmitri, but the bombardment forces him to flee. Sacha emerges and fatally shoots Frankenstein before taking his severed head and Dmitri's camera as proof of the mission. Sacha escapes as the revived Sergei kills Dmitri.
The "document" then ends with a photo of a newly promoted Sacha standing next to Stalin.