Overlord *** (2018, Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Mathilde Ollivier, John Magaro, Pilou Asbæk, Iain De Caestecker) – Movie Review

Director Julius Avery’s Overlord (2018) is an exceptionally nasty and violent horror movie action thriller done with much conviction, zest and style. Audiences will need very strong stomachs, maybe even sick bags. The body count is high, while subtlety is low. It is totally visceral. It is easy to get caught up in the action and just as easy to be glad to be out of the cinema.

It starts like a World War Two war movie as a group of American paratroopers are dropped behind enemy lines into France to carry out a mission crucial to the success D-Day – blowing up a strategic tower. But then it turns into a horror flick as they find themselves encountering a French woman (Mathilde Ollivier) and her little brother, and then fighting the results of an on-going Nazi experiment as the survivors of the group approach this German-occupied village.

Can they survive the Nazis and a zombie apocalypse, carry out their mission and save the day, and the girl, and the kid? Look, hey, they are Americans!

Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, John Magaro, Pilou Asbæk, Iain De Caestecker, Jacob Anderson and Dominic Applewhite have the main roles as Boyce, Ford, Tibbet, Wafner, Chase, Dawson and Rosenfeld, with Adepo and Russell outstanding in the big fat star parts as concerned trooper and tough leader.

Audiences can expect strong bloody violence, torture, disturbing images and strong language, and weirdly with all this going on, it has a kind of arty, studio-bound look to it, like a 2018 Hammer horror film. Interesting. It is made by movie buffs, obviously. It is really rather well written – by Billy Ray (story and screenplay) and Mark L Smith (screenplay) – with considerable imagination, skill and originality.

Paramount’s Overlord, produced by J J Abrams, opened on 9 November 2018 in America, taking $10 million from 2,859 cinemas in its first week. It cost $38 million.

(1.) Smith was brought in to polish Ray’s script, which now has a mostly different third act and action scenes. (2.) One of the filming locations is a decommissioned branch line of the Bluebell Railway, West Sussex, England. (3.) The movie generally prefers practical effects to CGI effects, with use of old-school puppetry and animatronics, as well as real fire. (4.) Pilou Asbæk’s disfigured face makeup took five hours each day to apply. (5.) The title refers to Operation Overlord, code name for the Allies’ Battle of Normandy, part of D-Day.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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