From director Julius Avery and producer J.J. Abrams (and Stephen King approved) comes the WWII Nazi-Zombie Horror thriller you didn’t know you needed.
Your typical zombie movie will have your lead characters face off a horde of zombies but “Overlord” stays away from this plot and instead spins it’s own terrifying narrative.
It’s an R16 “Captain America: The First Avenger” with Nazi experiments aimed to creating the perfect soldier but of course they are not looking for “willing volunteers” nor do their “perfect soldiers” look anything like Captain America.
On the eve of D-Day, American soldiers are sent on a mission to destroy a German radio tower in a small village in France in order to support the troops landing on Normandy. But even before they can land, disaster strikes when their plane is attacked.
A small group of soldiers survive, led by the mysterious explosives expert Corporal Ford (Wyatt Russell). Pvt. Boyce (Jovan Adepa) is the “soldier who can’t kill a mouse” he’s not built for war but will fulfill his duty. He is the voice of reason to Corporal Ford’s more aggressive nature; along with other paratroopers who survive the attack, the group meets a French girl, Chloe (Mathilde Olliver). I feel that the three, Boyce, Ford and Chloe have the sort of Finn-Poe-Rey- trifecta that works. The actors are relative unknowns but they get the job done.
Shout out to Danish actor and “Game of Thrones” baddie Pilou Asbaek, who plays Dr. Wafner, a Nazi doctor who becomes a “zombie with a grudge” which is fun because while mindless zombies are scary, one that has extra motivation to end you is even scarier.
Chloe helps the soldiers as her own village has been taken over by the Nazis, regularly taking “volunteers” for their experiments. Their experiments of course turn out to be the development of a serum that can bring back the dead and give them super human strength which is of course basically trying to create their version of a “super soldier” -or in this case, zombies.
I love how in the end, Ford tells Boyce “our side can’t have it too”. “It” of course being the serum and technology to create these monsters, as if the jaded Ford already knows what America would do if they also had that kind of power in their hands.
What starts out as a war movie, takes a bit to transform into its horror counterpart but once it does, it is a fun gender bent zombie gore fest with some images that will stay with me for a while that’s for sure. There are a couple of jump scares in there to satisfy the horror fans and a bit of social commentary on “how low are you willing to go to defeat the enemy?” Do you become monsters like them too? -you know for those of who are looking for more than just a zombie movie.
7/10 – “Overlord” delivers on its promise of a bloody good time and is a fun mashup of genres, not everyone would have the guts to try and produce.