'Overlord' Is a Terrific Genre Offering

At one point, Overlord was reported to be the fourth Cloverfield installment.  However, months before its release, it was officially announced that it would be its own thing – completely unrelated to Cloverfield.  My guess is that the initial intention was for it to be part of the Cloverfield series, but the eventual business decision was to not push through with it, so that it could be distanced from the lukewarm reception of The Cloverfield Paradox (which is, for the record, a movie I actually liked).  In the end, tying it up with Cloverfield or not wouldn’t have mattered.  Either way, it would have turned out being terrific.

Overlord is a World War II horror film about an American paratrooper squad who are dropped behind enemy lines on the eve of D-Day.  Their mission: destroy a disruptive radio transmitter situated in a small village’s church which has been turned into a stronghold by the Nazi occupiers.  However, the American soldiers discover that the base also houses shocking, hellish experiments that aim to create an unstoppable undead army.

Nazis doing mad science experiments as well as Nazi zombies aren’t necessarily original.  They’re familiar tropes of WW II alt-history fiction (partly because Hitler and the Nazis were indeed into weird science fiction-y and occult stuff in real life).  I’ve already seen the general concept of Overlord done a couple of times before.  But the film’s execution is so proficient and exciting that it still comes off fresh and strong.

I would have really loved if I had gone into this movie blind.  I wish I wasn’t aware of what Overlord is, and just somehow randomly stumbled into it and saw it without knowing what it was going to be about (the same kind of experience I had with some cinematic gems when I was a kid channel surfing through cable).  It’s because the film unfolds in such a way that will definitely potently surprise the unaware.  It opens like a typical World War II movie – and a very solid one at that.  Then, with how it is handled and presented, the detail that there are science fiction and horror elements in it could have been an unforeseen, delightful, jaw-dropping reveal.

All in all, I had a lot of fun watching this movie.  It’s packed with gratifying, spectacular genre violence, and is lavished with stylish cinematography and excellent production value.  The script is a little bit derivative and superficial, but fabulous direction makes up for any narrative weaknesses.  For what it is, Overlord is pretty great.