Overlord (2018)

Movie Info

Do I have something in my teeth?

A paratrooper squad has a special mission on D-Day to destroy a German radio tower in a Nazi controlled village.  When a secret Nazi laboratory is uncovered, the soldiers realize that the Nazis have bigger plans than simply winning the war…they want to create the ultimate soldier.  Now, the squad must shutdown the operation and complete their mission before it is too late!

Directed by Julius Avery, Overlord is a World War II Nazi zombie sci-fi mash-up movie.  Produced by J.J. Abrams, the film premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 22, 2018 and received a wide release in November 2018.  The movie was met with mixed to positive reviews.

I always approach stuff from J.J. Abrams with caution.  I have liked a lot of his things, but I’ve also been underwhelmed by him multiple times.  The concepts and ideas behind Overlord are intriguing, but I have to admit that the pacing didn’t keep me interested.

Ripley, eat your hear out!

Mash-up movies are tricky in that they are generally bait and switch.  Overlord is presented at the start as a World War II mission movie and becomes a sci-fi zombie horror film.  It generally seems like the filmmakers need to commit to the switch and really flip it.  I wasn’t that into the World War II basic story and felt like it had been done multiple times…but the zombie portion didn’t feel like it ratcheted up the action, gore, or horror enough to really be a contrast to the beginning of the film.  I wanted the film to get totally crazy, but it felt like it was holding back.

The cast is solid but rather forgettable.  Like war movies, it has the stock characters.  It has the pacifist (Jovan Adepo), the warmonger mission first soldier (Wyatt Russell), the observer (Iain De Caestecker), and the jerk with a heart of gold (John Magaro).  They are against the cliché Nazi (Pilou Asbæk) and aided by the tough-as-nails woman trying to save her village and family (Mathilde Ollivier).  It would have been interesting since the movie was constructed around a plot switch to have everyone switch roles…but instead they all hold the course.

Pork-chop sandwiches!!!

There are a lot of zombie movies now.  I thought that since it was a mash-up that the movie would completely try to reinvent zombie and create something new to blow the minds of the viewers.  The zombies instead were rather typical (they were the scary running zombies) and they were effective, but I wanted more (and more of the zombies).

Nazi zombie movies are their own little niche.  I admire what Overlord attempted, but I wasn’t very impressed by it (I enjoyed the flip of From Dusk Till Dawn which had a similar feel more).  I feel like I saw a lot of what I already expected and had seen before in Overlord (actually the 1975 independent World War II movie Overlord impressed me more simply by showing some crazy WWII weaponry I hadn’t seen).  I could actually see Overlord having a sequel, and I actually could endorse seeing where the story goes.