Overlord (2018)
Directed by Julius Avery
Written by Billy Ray, Mark L. Smith
Starring Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, John Magaro, Bokeem Woodbine
Release Date November 18th, 2018
Published November 17th, 2018
Overlord stars Jovan Adepo as Boyce, an infantry soldier, completely out of his depth when he’s dropped behind enemy lines in France during World War 2. Boyce, along with a group of 20 or so other soldiers have the task of destroying a German stronghold where a radio tower stands. The soldiers must destroy this communication tower, inside an old French church before the troops hit the beach at Normandy, the famed D-Day raid, and keep the Nazis from being able to radio for help.
The plan requires men jumping from a plane over heavily guarded German territory and while the infantrymen are fooling themselves as best they can, they know that of the 20 or so on the plane, only a handful will survive the drop and be able to try and complete the mission. Boyce has an antagonistic relationship with many in his squad but the movie is smart not to linger over this with exposition, we will get around to that.
The plane gets shot at and is about to crash when Boyce gets tossed out by his Sgt. On the ground, after nearly drowning in a lake, Boyce meets up with the few men who survived the drop. These include the commanding Corporal Ford (Wyatt Russell), the bullying Tibbet (John Magaro), an AP cameraman and soldier named Chase (Ian De Caestecker) and one other soldier who is not long for the movie.
You will recognize the dead meat guy pretty quickly as he is the first and only one of the soldiers to spend time talking about what he plans to do when he gets home. He may as well have a wife with a baby on the way and a sign that says shoot me. The character is kind of a parody of the classic trope about the innocent lamb being led to the slaughter of war, but Overlord is not meant to be a parody.The film's modest sense of humor appears tacked on.
Here we make the turn away from the plot and into a discussion of the movie as a conception. Overlord appeared to be, from the trailer, a wild-eyed zombie soldier movie that would be a rollicking ride. It is not quite that, not exactly. Instead, Overlord is a surprisingly straightforward World War 2 thriller that takes on elements of science fiction via historical speculation about the Germans experimenting on Jewish people, captured soldiers and their own dead soldiers.
There is history to back up the idea that the Germans were committing horrific atrocities in the name of science. In fact, you might not want to dig too deeply into how some of the medicines of the day today came to be via what monstrous German scientists did to a lot of innocent people. I won’t cite a specific example here so as not to get bogged down in conspiracy theories, I mention this only to provide an insight into where the makers of Overlord are coming from.
The intention here is to make an entertaining thriller with elements of science fiction and horror in the midst of the genuine, human drama of war. This is not a movie to be taken seriously but Overlord is a movie that surprisingly earns a little bit of self-seriousness that I know I wasn’t expecting from what I assumed would be a World War 2 zombie movie. There are elements of that zombie idea, but the story actually appears more at home in the world of speculative science fiction than the braindead horror genre.
Speaking of horror, the best element of Overlord is the body horror element. The special effects at play in Overlord, especially the makeup effects, are superb in how they turn stomachs. One particular soldier's gruesome death is preceded by a transformation from man to God knows what kind of monster, featuring some truly gut wrenching visuals. Director Julius Avery may be a newcomer to big budget horror but he has a tremendous vision for terror, a mastery of creepy imagery that should bode well for his career.
Overlord is tense and fun, a tad slow at times, and rather conventional given the zombie premise, but I do recommend the movie. Overlord is a terrific piece of war-time suspense and speculative science fiction. German scientists did horrible things to people in the name of war and Overlord is the rare movie to push the boundaries and look closer, even from the pop sci-fi perspective, at the horrors of Nazi scientist war crimes.
Think of Overlord like a thought experiment that goes to the most broad and even ludicrous lengths regarding speculation over what Nazi scientists were willing to do to those they deemed inferior to them. There is real life evidence to suggest that German scientists may have experimented on dead bodies and reanimation of corpses. That’s not me saying that Overlord has a basis in fact, it doesn’t, but I don’t see the harm in taking the idea of what Nazis may have done to people to an extreme conclusion.
The World War 2 backdrop gives Overlord an unpredictable and chaotic bit of suspense that really works and keeps us in the audience aware of the constant danger, not just from monstrous reanimated corpses, but from the Nazis who make a great villain.
Overlord is in theaters nationwide now and is worth a look. Even if you wait for DVD and Blu Ray, if you’re a fan of horror movies, you will enjoy Overlord.
