Overlord Review
Directed by Julius Avery
Written by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith
"A thousand year Reich needs thousand year soldiers"
The Nazi zombie sub-genre rises from the grave once again with the aid of J. J. Abrams led production company Bad Robot. Will the blood filled war movie successfully walk on two legs or is it doomed to rot six feet deep? The short answer is yeah, it fucking runs. I loved Overlord, so let's bite into it.
A small group of soldiers are "dropped" outside of a small French village with the goal of destroying a Nazi radio transmitter in an old church hours before D-Day. It becomes clear that the church is infected with Nazi soldiers and that the building is being used not only for communication but something sinister lurks underneath that could change the war. I'm really impressed with how the movie slowly introduces the horror aspect of the plot. Overlord doesn't switch from war movie to B-Movie without warning, it actually perfectly plants the seeds of terror and it slowly blossoms into an absolute blast of a splatter movie. Not just that but all of the heavy war content is very effective, from the wonderfully classic title card to the fire fights, the war side of Overlord is intense, convincing and simply fantastic.
The horror side is also great because we get a little bit of everything. Great moments of suspense with big scares, some really creepy moments with unsettling imagery and when the movie wants to go for it, it really goes for it with some absolutely wild scenes of gore and violence. The crazy gore mixed with the Nazi zombie plot do give off a B-Movie splatter feel but the movie rides with it and creates an all out more enjoyable experience. I think the pace will drop for a lot of people in the middle but I really didn't have an issue with it. My plot issues are pretty nitpicky. Certain areas could have being explained better or expanded upon and the characters might make the odd silly horror movie decision for the sake of a scare but non of these things were apparent enough and the movie was so outrageously entertaining that it really didn't bother me.
We have a character crash course at the beginning of Overlord, you immediately understand who we are spending our time with and they're not bad a bad bunch at all. There's the odd semi-recognizable actor but we have a good set of unknowns here including our main character Boyce played by Jovan Adepo. The character is timid and caring which places doubt in a few of the other soldiers since you know... They're at war. Boyce obviously has to find his inner warrior to survive this harrowing experience and perhaps that could have been built up to better but nonetheless, Jovan does a great job here. The same can be said about the rest of the cast. Ford is the rough and experienced Corporal action hero type played very well by Wyatt Russell. You do question his motives and methods but he proves to be a very useful member of the team. Chloe is an accommodating resident in the French village who has dealt with a lot and she's tougher for it, she's not soulless like a lot of movies trying to make a "badass" female character make the mistake of doing and Mathilda Ollivier gives a good performance.
The rest of the cast are great as their characters, they all have their traits and they run with them pretty effectively, Tibbet played by John Magaro being my favorite. To top it all off we get a crazy grimy horror movie villain in Wafner played by Pilou Asbaek. I don't want to ruin too much so let's just say he takes a turn for the mad in the best possible way. If you want a really deep set of characters for a serious war drama then they might not be enough for you but for a horror movie, they are a really strong set.
Overlord features a lot of great practical effects with a slice of CGI here and there which are mostly good. The CGI drops in quality for a couple moments but considering the B-Movie style of the film, it fits right in. The Nazi labs are filled with effect wizardry mainly coming from the human experiments placed around and the effects in the action scenes are wonderful. An exploding head, missing body parts and ravaged flesh is all on display here along with explosions and bullet hellfire and it's any gorehounds ideal experience at the pictures. The zombies and alike look great and gross but a little more variation of the experimentees would have been perfect. You know, a few more zombie animals and creatures here and there.
Overlord is certainly an absolute roller coaster ride of insanity and is very possibly the most fun cinema experience I've had this year but it's very much in my comfort zone and it speaks to me as a consumer of the weird, schlocky and wonderful. It's not the kind of film for every audience but the audience it if for should undoubtedly have a blast.
Rating ****½
Better than > Dead Snow Worse than > Dead Snow: Red vs. Dead (Or maybe as good as)
Main pros -Fun outlandish plot -Strong cast -Great war/splatter movie mix -Strong entertaining practical effects -Buckets of gore
Main Cons I don't actually have any big problems, more so a small collecting of fairly insignificant issues.
So there we have it, a great new entry in the Nazi zombie horror sub-genre and perhaps one of the best. Don't sit this one out horror fans, you will regret it.
