If ever there was a horror movie that my dad would have liked, it would be Overlord.
On the eve of D-Day, a group of American paratroopers must destroy a German radio tower before the Allies hit the beaches. If they fail, the Germans will be able to call in air support and the liberation of France will be doomed.
Private Boyce (Jovan Adepo) and Corporal Ford (Wyatt Russell) survive the drop behind enemy lines but most of their unit is killed. The pair find fellow survivors Chase (Iain De Caestecker), Tibbet (John Magaro), and Dawson (Jacob Anderson.) The soldiers encounter Chloe (Mathilde Olliver,) a French woman, who leads them into her village near the church on which the radio tower is located. Soon, we (and the American soldiers) learn that the church is harboring something more sinister than a radio tower.
From movies like Hellboy, Shock Waves, and Outpost and video games like Wolfenstein, Zombie Army Trilogy, and Call of Duty‘s Nazi zombies mode, we’ve seen tales of Nazi experiments gone horribly awry many times before. Overlord treads over some very well-worn ground but does so — at least initially — masked as a very capable action movie. In fact, had I sat down without knowing I was watching a horror movie, I’d probably have thought I was watching a throwback to the type of war movies I used to watch with my dad on TV in the 1970s. If ever there was a horror movie that my dad would have liked, it would be Overlord.
At roughly the halfway mark, the movie sheds its war movie artifice and begins to lose a little steam. Once the secret of the Nazi laboratory is revealed, the movie plays out just like an installment of the Wolfenstein video game series. The Nazi characterizations are as cartoonish as any found in the aforementioned video games. Even if one doesn’t speak German, anyone would be able to tell what they’re saying. It’s the same elementary German dialogue found in every third-rate World War II movie: “Achtung,” “Schnell,” and so forth. The Allied characters are equally stereotypical.
Thankfully, there are a few surprises in Overlord. Director Julius Avery handles the action scenes with aplomb. Particularly, the opening sequence featuring the paratroopers’ planes encountering flak bursts. The special effects are a satisfying blend of practical and computer-generated with plenty of gore for those who enjoy that sort of thing. I found much more pleasure in the art direction, props, and set design. It might not all be accurate for the time period but it gets the job done. For having a relatively small budget, Overlord looks fantastic.
In terms of scares, though, Overlord is mild. It’s a better action movie than it is a horror movie.
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
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