Although the film wasn't as crazy over-the-top insane as promised, Overlord still delivers a very solid Action/Horror film that never loses a beat.
“Nothing can prepare you for the mind-blowing mayhem that is OVERLORD. Mega producer J.J. ABRAMS creates an insanely twisted thrill ride about a team of American paratroopers who come face-to-face with Nazi super-soldiers unlike the world has ever seen. “You’ll never get a moment to breathe” in this critically acclaimed, nonstop action epic you have to see to believe.”
Overlord opens as a group of soldiers, part of the D-Day invasion, on a plane waiting to drop into France. As incoming artillery rocks the plane and sends it spiraling out of control, only a handful of men make it to the ground. After landing in a lake and cutting himself free, Boyce (Jovan Adepo) meets up with other members of his unit: Ford (Wyatt Russell), Tibbet (John Magaro), Chase (Iain De Caestecker), and Dawson (Jacob Anderson). When the group meets tragedy in a minefield claiming the life of Dawson, they carefully head toward a nearby forest before they can be discovered, stumbling upon Chloe (Mathilde Oliver), a woman from a nearby town that has been scavenging supplies. She agrees to take the men with her to the Nazi-occupied town which contains their mission objective, a communications tower vital to the opposition of the Allied force landing on the beaches of Normandy.
As Chloe leads the men to her upstairs attic, terrible moaning can be heard from one of the bedrooms. Chloe insists it’s her aunt who is sick, but the men seem a bit weary of the dreadful moans, heading to the attic to make plans to attack their target. Throughout the night, the men witness the Nazis drag people from their homes and murder them, carting their bodies away. Ford orders Tibbet and Chase to go out for recon, trying to get more information on the Nazi deployment. Meanwhile, Boyce can’t help himself but to investigate the moaning, seeing her aunt with hideous lesions and boils all over her. Chloe tells him that she hasn’t said a word after coming back from a church that the Nazis have occupied. While Boyce learns more about Chloe, one of the commanding Nazi officers, Wafner (Pilou Asbaek) knocks on her door, wanting to spend the night with her. She reluctantly relents when Wafner threatens to search her home and take away Chloe’s little brother like he did her aunt. Seeing this from above, Boyce intervenes as he and Ford take him captive. Ford orders Boyce to go out and find Tibbet and Chase, and as he searches the woods he’s chased by a dog and finds refuge in the nearest place he can, a moving truck piled full of dead bodies, heading directly to the church, where all kinds of horrors lie in wait.
Overlord is in a category all its own touting a mashup of a war-action film and a horror film. While the trailers portray it as non-stop horror action raging war against zombie Nazis, this is in no way how the movie actually unfolds, which may be my biggest gripe about the film. Not about the fact that it isn’t what I thought, I think I enjoy it more how it actually is, but for the fact it’s so misleading in the trailers. Going into the film after viewing the trailer, I believed this was to be kind of an alternate reality type of film, in which Nazis succeeded at raising the dead and the Allied forces were forced to battle them in combat, almost like a film-version of the video game Wolfenstein. Anyone who might have thought similarly to myself will find something quite different, but that’s not such a bad thing.
The best thing Overlord does is combine these genres in such a way that creates a really entertaining film that doesn’t go too over the top. While those who may have wanted that might be disappointed, there is a subtle balance in the horror and action that keeps the pace wonderfully and knows the perfect moments when to stray into horror territory. As far as World War II films go, this is just as entertaining as some of the more acclaimed films, delivering that sense of camaraderie and brotherhood in the face of imminent threats all around. It also delivers some great battle sequences, not only the breathtakingly stunning visuals of the D-Day invasion at the beginning of the film, but also close quarter combat you’d expect to find in a war film. The horror aspect is also done extremely well, slowly building some very effective tension throughout the entire film as you try to figure out what kind of horrific experiments are being done by the Nazis. When we are finally introduced to the results of these experiments, make-up and effects are above and beyond what you would normally see if this wasn’t a J.J. Abrams produced film. The effects are grotesque and amazing, showing us some very unique sequences.
Video
Overlord is presented in 2160p 4k Ultra HD Widescreen 2.39:1 and presented in Dolby Vision and HDR. The Dolby Vision looks fantastic on this 4k set, with the added benefit of dynamic meta data changing the look of each sequence accordingly. This is a very dark film most of the time, with the deep blacks contrasting nicely with the color palate that looks exceptionally vivid. Everything looks so much sharper and more detailed: the war sequences, the horror aspects of the film, especially the make-up effects. If you’re on the fence about Blu-Ray or 4k, this is one of those films that really pushes the boundary and benefits extremely from the Ultra High Definition treatment.
Audio
The audio is presented in Dolby Atmos, which is always a highlight for me getting to listen to an Atmos track. What better way to listen to this war film, especially that opening sequence, with the Atmos track making it sound like the planes are directly overhead of you. This is indeed one of the better tracks to show off your setup, including some great balance in all the surrounds and center channel.
Special Features
There is only one extra on the Blu-Ray disc of the set, but this is an almost hour long documentary about the making of the film with everyone involved in the process of creating it, including J.J. Abrams. It’s a interesting watch if you want to learn more about the process and how the film came to be.
- The Horrors of War
Although Overlord didn’t create the insanely crazy alternate reality I thought it would, there’s something even more chilling that perhaps this story could have happened given Hitler’s obsession with the occult and fringe science. It’s a very entertaining film that fans of both action and horror genres will be sure to enjoy.
