Nazi zombies? Who ever heard of such a thing?

On the eve of D-Day, a group of American soldiers paratroop behind enemy lines in hopes that they can take down the enemy’s tower that’s messing with the radio-signals for Allies. It’s a simple mission that will hopefully be successful, but it suddenly all becomes a little more difficult when it turns out that the Nazis are up to something not good. Well other than trying to exterminate a whole race of people based on racial-background, they’re now trying to create some sort of super-soldier that never dies, never gets hurt and can continue to fight until, well, forever. It’s the kind of crazy experiment that’s still in the early-planning stages, but for a few of the American soldiers who have somehow made it this far, they’re in for a real treat.

Or not.

Overlord does something that we don’t too often see in movies, especially not in big-budget releases, in that it combines a war and horror film, but gives it a little grindhouse twist. It’s the kind of cult-y movie that gets a very small, limited-release before it’s soon released somewhere on VOD and shown time and time again for midnight screenings. But nope, Overlord‘s a pretty big movie and for what it’s worth, it’s pretty weird.

Which makes it all the more enjoyable, really.

And while it’s still up in the air about whether or not this has anything to do with the Cloverfield franchise, it doesn’t really matter because Overlord stands on its own two feet just as a solid action-horror flick that also happens to be taking place during WWII. It’s a surprisingly risky move for a big-budget movie, but it works because director Julius Avery isn’t afraid to go through some strange, dark and disturbing places to give this premise the full-go. What originally starts out as a normal, sort of run-of-the-mill war-flick about American soldiers trying to blow-up a tower, soon becomes a monster-flick in which the soldiers are being hunted by a possibly unstoppable and unkillable force.

It also helps that Overlord is a lot of fun, knows its audience, and doesn’t skimp-out on the actual blood, gore, and horror. Sure, there’s a story underneath it all, with a bunch of characters that are identifiable by one trait and one trait only, but they don’t really have to be anything more than what they are: Soldiers. Jovan Adepo is solid as the rare POC-protagonist in a WWII-film, which makes it great to see in many more ways than one; Wyatt Russell, once again proves that he’s about to become his father, again; John Magaro is basically the smart-ass and comic-relief of the group; Pilou Asbaek is, as usual, pretty effective as the snarling, insanely over-the-top SS Officer who you hate from the very beginning and never come around to; and Mathilde Ollivier, as Chloe, the French girl we literally stumble upon in the woods, steals the show as a smart, rough, tough, and actually deadly character who kills just as much as the boys do. See, even in your bloody, violent, and crazy B-movies, there’s inclusion and progressive-storytelling, which makes a movie like Overlord, for all of its silliness, somehow more worth it.

Cloverfield attachment or not, let’s all hope it does well.

Consensus: Overlord starts out as just another war flick, but soon morphs into something creepy, violent, and fun, even while it straddles the line between horror and war all the more.

7 / 10

Photos Courtesy of: Paramount Pictures