OVERLORD: A Fun, Bloody, Crowd-Pleasing World War II Epic-Meets-Zombie Horror Piece of Entertainment

Genre: Action, Horror, Mystery, War

Produced by: J.J. Abrams, Lindsey Weber

Directed by: Julius Avery

Written by: Billy Ray, Mark L. Smith

Production Company: Paramount Pictures

Starring: Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Pilou Asbaek, John Magaro, Mathilde Ollivier, Bokeem Woodbine 

Runtime: 108 minutes

SYNOPSIS: 

 

On the eve of D-Day, a small, ragtag team of American paratroopers crash-lands into enemy territory. Thrown right in the middle of battle, they must deal not only with Nazi soldiers, but also something much more supernatural and terrifying that’s lurking under the surface. 

REVIEW: 

 

A little bit of math equation for the pop culture aficionados: what are Paramount Pictures + Bad Robot Productions + confidential plot + extraterrestrial/supernatural creature feature equal to?

Yes, a Cloverfield movie. 

Of course, not every Paramount-Bad Robot joint effort is a Cloverfield movie, but the Cloverfield brand has become something that’s inherent to these two respective studios’ success. And pretty much, both Paramount executives and Bad Robot head J.J. Abrams had to live through it. Cloverfield was such a massive hit in 2008 that it served as both a blessing and a curse for forthcoming Paramount-Bad Robot micro-budgeted standalone productions. It’s almost unimaginable the many times J.J. Abrams have to come onstage, and explain to the press whether the movie he’s promoting is a Cloverfield movie or not. 

Eventually, Cloverfield spawned two more legitimate sequels (10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) and The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)), and most notably, also a dozen fake-outs. Super 8 was the first case of the Cloverfield fake-outs. Many people believed that Super 8 was the long-awaited Cloverfield 2 movie leading up to its 2011 release. It surely didn’t help that Super 8’s visuals share the same grainy, gritty images and the confidential, creature feature narrative of Cloverfield. It’s no longer a mystery by now that Super 8 was so much its own thing. 

The “everything is a Cloverfield movie” epidemic even extends to a non-Bad Robot production. There are some who claimed that the Michael Bay/ Platinum Dunes-produced A Quiet Place (2018) is a secret fourth Cloverfield sequel. Like Super 8, it’s got the Cloverfieldian imagery, concept and even the creature design. But surprise surprise, it was once again its own thing. 

And so, it is not surprising that when Paramount and Bad Robot band up together again for another micro-budgeted, Abrams-esque Mystery Box product simply titled Overlord, people quickly jumped into conclusion that it is without a doubt a Cloverfield 4. 

It ticks all the boxes for a Cloverfield movie. It’s got an element of creature feature in it through the Nazi zombies. The fact that the audience knows very little of the film’s plot except for the World War II setting fits the franchise’ element of narrative confidentiality. Plus, since The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) went to Netflix, Overlord’s theatrical release could satiate people’s thirst to see another Cloverfield movie on the big screen. 

Once again, with the hard-R rating slapped into the poster this time around along with J.J. Abrams’ statement denying the film’s relation to the Cloverfield franchise on April 25^th, 2018, Overlord is the latest in a series of Cloverfield fake-outs. 

But, if someday J.J. Abrams decides to retcon Overlord’s dissociation with Cloverfield and make it canon, then Overlord should be the perfect continuation to Cloverfield’s latter anthological storytelling. Obviously, 2008’s Cloverfield took the term “monster movie” quite literally with the shaky-cam sight of a Kaiju-style monster wreaking havoc in New York. But with its sequels like 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) and The Cloverfield Paradox (2018), the Cloverfield franchise starts to evolve into an attempt to give the monster movie genre some thematic, metaphorical depth. In other words, the so-called monster in a monster movie doesn’t always have to come in the form of giant creatures from outer space or different dimensions. Sometimes, the so-called monster can come figuratively in the form of one’s conflicts with its own psychology or fellow human beings. 

Figuratively speaking, Overlord is a monster movie. It uses the World War II setting to explore how the horrific realities of the war coincide with the rise of the monsters inside people, even the nicest men in the world. The dehumanization of man in the midst of war is a natural thing considering that both the country and the world are at stake. At that point, soldiers are servants to their own countries, and at that same point, they will do whatever necessary to protect them, even sacrificing any sense of camaraderie and mercy. It is where fellow countrymen start clashing heads, losing their minds to threatening each other at gunpoint. And the film does occasionally explore the soldiers’ struggle to retain humanity or embrace their monsters through the American paratroopers’ eyes, particularly with the conflict going on between the more forgiving Private Boyce (Jovan Adepo) and his more hotheaded superior Corporal Ford (Wyatt Russell). 

But then again, to those who are familiar with the World War II narrative, nothing personifies war better than the world’s number one enemy the Nazi. In Cloverfield terms, the Nazis are Overlord’s version of the Clover.  And Nazi both in history and pop culture provides the clearest example on the role of war in the breeding of monsters. Sure, the zombified spin to such a historical event does require some suspension of disbelief, but the genocidal, Holocaust-inspired imageries director Julius Avery had to offer, especially when the paratroopers discover the Nazi underground laboratory for the first time, feel startlingly real. In a way, scenes of the Nazi forcefully subjecting innocent villagers to their zombie experiments in this film play like a visual metaphor on the Hitler-era dictatorship, with the creation of the undead being an allusion to the Nazi trying to brainwash people into believing their ideals. 

Even without the Cloverfield connection, Overlord manages to stand on its own as a fun war action-meets-zombie horror entertainment. An element that heavily supports the fun experience is its breakneck speed. Overlord’s pacing is comparable to past non-stop action classics like The Raid (2011), Mission Impossible III (2006) and Speed (1994). Avery here understands the sacred law of action filmmaking: keep its protagonist in constant peril at all cause. Except for three to five minutes of expository and character moment dialogues, the rest of its 108-minute runtime is a straightforward mad dash through the woods and underground bunker filled with Nazi gunfire, explosions and slow-moving, yet near indestructible zombies. The fact that the first thing the film’s lead character Boyce does after he falls down into land is run away from intense Nazi gunfire, without even having a chance to catch a single breath, sets the tone for what comes after.  

Surprisingly though, for a film that moves so fast, it is directed in such controlled fashion by Avery. Avery’s touch is evident in the way he balances the wartime action and zombie horror. After all, Overlord contains one of the most interesting, yet most toxic genre chemistry in film history. A war movie is like rock music, one that thrives from the loud noises and in-your-face imagery, while horror movie is like an orchestra, one that thrives from the steady build-up in suspense and subtle imagery. 

Somehow, Avery manages to sustain the tension throughout its runtime, even as the film alternates between two genres. And the thing that makes such incoherent genre mash-up works is the coherent editing. There’s rarely a single moment in the progression of events that feel out of place. Scenes from the troopers shooting down Nazi soldiers to them running away from Nazi zombies flow so naturally without seeming too jarring. 

Overlord features one of the most immersive war sequences ever to grace the screen since Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk last summer.  As expected, the wartime action pounds its audience over the head with essentially a barrage of loud, earsplitting noises and bat-shit crazy wartime mayhem. In Overlord’s defense though, it’s done to preserve the magic of cinema. Cinema is a medium that works like a portal, intended to transport its audience to another world. 

Using the sound, aesthetics and hands-on camerawork as means to assault its audience’s ears, eyes, and even heart, it successfully transports its audience into the harsh surroundings of battle. It is as if the whole theater is suddenly filled with the same uneasy smell of the grime and napalm displayed onscreen. An explosion that’s miles away in the background can suddenly feel like it is only two or three seats away in the theater such as its sheer force. 

Besides being a war movie specialist, Julius Avery also proves to be quite a horror movie specialist himself. Following his understanding of other genres, Avery also understands the allure of the horror genre: the mystery. Looking back at Overlord from beginning to end, the zombies aren’t even in the film as much as people might have expected, which is a breather from the typical zombie horror jump scare fests. The way the film creeps into its audience relies on the suggestion of such strange occurrences. 

In fact, a lot of the film’s first two acts mostly revolve around the paratroopers toying around whether what they’re dealing with is supernatural or not. There are slight hints spread quite early on, like when Boyce sees one door at the end of the hall left mysteriously ajar when he is exploring the local Chloe’s (Mathilde Ollivier) house, but they’re presented in such subtle manner that maintains the suspense. 

And when the film finally reaches the Nazi zombie’s physical reveal, J.J. Abrams proves that he made the right decision by separating Overlord from the Cloverfield franchise. Overlord as a Cloverfield movie would have possibly been a PG-13 movie, which would greatly diminish the Nazi zombie’s scare factor. A hard-R zombie movie would have allowed for a more organic-looking zombie, with more flesh and blood on sight. 

Abrams’ preference for the latter culminates into probably one of the creepiest, most bad-ass looking zombies of the year. And what’s more remarkable is how the gory zombie effect is so seamlessly integrated into the actors’ body parts. It is almost hard to tell whether the zombie’s peeling flesh is make-up or visual effect, which is a compliment to the experts working in the technical department. 

 

Beyond the zombie look, its commitment on hard-R gore extends to the zombie action. Avery is clearly influenced by 1980’s body horror movies, and here, he takes his love for the genre to an insane and appropriately bloody fashion. A bit of discretion though, the zombie gore in Overlord makes for a squeamish sight to those with a faint heart and a faint stomach. For those who like to rub their eyes with gore, this film is surely paradise for them. From the first time the zombie starts going crazy, what follows is a schlocky parade filled with face ripping, body dismemberment or exploding, to a person being brutally propped up on a metal hook. 

If there is any real qualm to be had with Overlord, the film does suffer from a bout of weak characters, particularly the American paratroopers. It is clear that the filmmakers are taking a leaf out of Christopher Nolan’s books with the paratroopers’ characterization in this film. Like in Nolan’s 2017 war epic Dunkirk, Overlord neglects both character depth and character development to focus more on whether they will survive their ordeals or not. At least, despite its vague characters, the actors’ expressions in Dunkirk are enough to allow the audience to care for their plight. 

However, that is much harder when it comes to Overlord. It seems that the filmmakers want the audience not to care about the American paratroopers. Written by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith, the script characterizes the paratroopers in such a bland, unlikable way that makes them feel like disposable characters. Despite their occasional showing of manliness in the film, under the surface, the troopers are simply walking horror movie archetypes with military suits. It is as if most of the characters are only there to make last-minute dumb decisions, be extra body counts to the zombies, or in the Lin Manuel-Miranda lookalike soldier’s case, be a rude, bigoted human being. It is clear by now that Private Boyce is essentially the male version of the final girl/virgin trope. 

Despite the other characters’ similarities to horror clichéd characters, Boyce’s similarity to the final girl trope makes him easily the best character in the film. He’s got an air of reluctant hero about him that’s very human and relatable. As the suspense around the characters start escalating in overwhelming fashion, Boyce as the more inexperienced trooper of the pack is the most reliable eye to capture the fear and paranoia when faced with the horrors of war. Credit to the lead actor Jovan Adepo, he gives a pretty workmanlike, but overall fairly solid performance that’s both vulnerable without looking clueless and strong without looking like an overpowered superhero. 

All of that aside, Boyce’s presence isn’t enough to justify why the audience should fully root for the American soldiers over the Nazi zombies. At the end of the day, it almost doesn’t matter whoever wins. 

CONCLUSION: 

Despite its horror cliché 101 characters, Overlord is a downright silly, over-the-top mash-up of World War II epic and zombie horror that works thanks to the brisk pacing, creepily cool creature make-up and crowd-pleasing bloody action. 

Score: 7.5/10