In short: Overlord (2018)

D-Day. The film follows a small group of soldiers who are parachuted in behind enemy lines to destroy a highly important German radar antenna at a church in a small French village. Hardly anyone survives the drop, and the handful of survivors don’t really seem to be enough to get through all of the Nazis between them and the goal of their mission. Our viewpoint character is Boyce (Jovan Adepo), somewhat looked down upon by most of his peers for being “too soft” (and one, imagines, for the colour of his skin, though the film doesn’t really go there) but who will, not surprisingly, be the film’s moral backbone. Also involved are the cynical and probably PTSD-haunted veteran of the Italian front Ford (Wyatt Russell), the group’s de facto leader after everyone else is dead (Bokeem Woodbine, we hardly knew ye), posturing sniper Tibbet (John Magaro), war photographer Chase (Iain De Caestecker), and dude with a Jewish name – that’s all the character he gets - Rosenfeld (Dominic Applewhite).

At least, they quickly meet the mandatory helpful hot French woman (Mathilde Ollivier). On the negative side, the Nazis don’t just have a radar operation going on in the village church but are also experimenting on the villagers and everyone else they can get their fingers on. Nazi zombie super soldier’s the watch word.

Julius Avery’s Overlord is a pretty peculiar movie. Going in, the film suggests some kind of pulped-up version of The Dirty Dozen with zombies, but the film’s first half turns out to be more of a harsh and ruthless war movie, with moments that feel authentically horrible, and little on screen that suggests any of the kind of brutal heroism you generally get from the more pulpy end of the war movie genre. I’m not complaining, mind you, for Avery is a rather decent hand at this sort of thing, turning out a first third that’s exciting but also not pulling any punches for the audience.

For the film’s middle part, things shift into increasingly less believable directions that feel rather more than the sort of war action movie with horror bits I had expected from Overlord going in, until the film’s final third suddenly turns its horror pulpiness up to eleven (starting with something unpleasant yet utterly silly happening to De Caestecker’s character), pumps its fist at absurd last stands, and goes all-out bonkers pulp war horror on us. The way the film handles this, this doesn’t feel like dramatic escalation but rather like someone taking the script, ripping out the second half (probably while roaring something about Nazis) and just ramming the second half of a completely different film into the director’s face. Fortunately, Avery mostly handles the last third with the right energy for the bizarre nonsense the script cooks up for him, so, even though the film doesn’t manage to be to anything like a coherent whole, what’s there is well-directed, performed by an ensemble that keep their dignity even under greatest duress, and highly entertaining.


Still, I wish I had gotten to see the second half of that ruthless war movie called Overlord, or the first one of the crazy pulp concoction of the same title instead of half of each of them.