OVERLORD **** U.S.A. 2018 Dir: Julius Avery 110 mins
On the eve of D-Day 1944, a team of paratroopers are flying to a rendezvous point in a small village in France. The church is being used as a German communications tower and their mission is to disable the tower before the fleet of ships reach the beach. Under heavy attack in the sky only a small number of the team make it to ground. Once in the village they take refuge in a locals house. Chloe explains her hostility towards the invading Germans and that villagers are being taken to the church. If they are lucky they do come back but they are different.
Chloe’s aunt being one of them and she seems a little unwell after her experience. One of the soldiers, Boyce, goes to meet up with some others from the team and manages to get inside the church compound. He discovers that it is being used for more then just communications. He ends up in an underground lab and finds villagers and US soldiers in various stages of deconstruction being used as test subjects for the Nazis new drug to create the ultimate thousand year warrior. When Chloes young brother is taken the soldiers end up fighting to end the experiments as well as bringing down the tower. Full on from the get go this combines the Hollywood war movie style with 80’s horror monster tropes and the high energy and effects of a first person video game to tremendous effect. It’s only slight down side for me would be that the “zombie” word has been thrown around a lot where this is concerned but in all fairness I can’t think of any other way of describing them. Technically that is what they are, if we are going by the more modern traits of zombies but I would take the zombie label with a big pinch of salt on this one. The monsters portrayed in this are created with a similar thinking to FRANKENSTEIN’S ARMY in the look and feel of the lab and experiments with a bit of an 80’s monster movie like THE THING or RE-ANIMATOR thrown in for good measure. The effects are brilliant. With its 18 certificate it is able to go all out with the gore, graphic wound depictions and the monsters in their various stages of construction. Combining practical effects with CGI but making it look very effective whilst keeping them big, bold and constant. The cast features actors from many different genres and not necessarily all from movies. Many seem to be more well known on the TV series front. Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm) and Pilou Asbaek (Euron Greyjoy) from GAME OF THRONES make an appearance. I adore Asbaek in everything I have seen him in so far and I love the fact that he plays the bad guy so well. Jovan Adepo had a role in TV series THE LEFTOVERS as well as an appearance in Darren Aronofsky’s bat shit crazy MOTHER!. We also have Wyatt Russell (son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn) from 22 JUMP STREET and one of my personal favourite episodes of BLACK MIRROR series 3 PLAYTEST. The rest of the cast are from a similar vein and all are fantastic and work incredibly well together. The soundtrack is huge and powerful adding to the relentless nature of the feature. OVERLORD is exciting and exhausting to watch right from the start which I love as there is not a single boring moment throughout the whole movie. I’m sure that for those in the know it is not strictly historically accurate but those small details can surely be overlooked for the sake of creating a truly exciting cinematic experience. On the whole I thoroughly enjoyed this movie being a big fan of both war and zombie movies this has almost everything I wanted from both. I would have preferred a bit more zombie action but you can’t have everything, that still makes it a massive recommend from me.
Review by Sarah Budd
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