I had such high hopes for Overlord. They had me the minute I watched the trailer. Not because of the WWII stuff (can’t do war movies, me) but because of the monsters and the Body Horror. A secret Nazi Lair where they’re turning people into monsters? Count me in. With a monster movie like that, they’d have to screw this one up pretty badly in order to put me off it. And I saw the name J.J. Abrams’s who didn’t direct it, but produced it. Hopefully that’s as good.
A little squad of American soldiers find horror behind enemy lines on the eve of D-Day.
Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a film with Nazis as villains. We tired of ISIS then? For a movie like this we need somebody to hate without guilt, it can’t just be the monsters. But even for having a such a well-used villain, they did such a good job. It turns out the horrors of war mix so nicely with the horrors of, well, Horror. Take a horrible, helpless situation (soldiers behind enemy lines) and throw in some monsters? Enemy strongholds are even worse when they house laboratories full of atrocities. The visuals on the War and also the Monsters were incredible.
It was hard to find much fault with Overlord. What I really noticed was how well paced Overlord was. Not just the act structure, etc but fact that there was tension in every scene. I sat through a LONG period where I needed to pee but couldn’t because I needed to see what happened. The characters were believably written and well acted. Iain De Caestecker is just the handsomest and Wyatt Russell wasn’t bad either. There was almost no fan service but I can forgive that, just this once. Those boys were there to do a job after all, they probably didn’t have time for a shower scene.
I did notice that Overlord opened (at least in the United States) on November 9, just before the Remembrance Day weekend. That can’t have been accidental. Going in, I wondered: is this cool? Or is it …for lack of a better word…. Tacky? I mean yes, the inspiration for this film is historically accurate; the Nazis did perform horrific experiments on their prisoners. So by reminding us of the atrocities of the holocaust, is it actually in the spirit of the weekend in which it was released?
So is Overlord worth watching? Yes, I enjoyed it, despite the fact that this was definitely a War movie with monster elements and not (as I had hoped) a monster movie that happened to be set in World War II. I’ll definitely be looking for a sequel when they decide to overdo it on the monsters at the expense of the plot. That’s the movie I wanted to see, but this one was good too.
Rating: [star rating=”3.5″]