The action-horror Overlord could be blamed for the same sins that Tarantino have been blamed for – bringing back the old ideas, executed already a long time ago, and taking advantage on them. Overlord is firmly rooted in the world of low-budget films of the 70s and 80s when troubles with Nazis and zombies occurred in a daily bases, and it is only welcoming that super-producer J.J. Abrams saw potential in this extremely simple idea. Probably Abrams didn’t have to persuade Paramount very much because his history as a producer brings the sound of money to the ears of the studio and making the film was therefore only a matter of time. If Overlord succeeds at the box office, it may encourage the production of even more big-budget* grindhouse films.
The story focuses on a black guy reminding the main character from Get Out, who is a young soldier during the Invasion of Normandy and acts as a moral compass among the allied soldiers who ignore the Third Geneva Convention. An intense action à la Saving Private Ryan soon becomes an entertaining mystery with a pinch of horror, during which the protagonists discover a secret Nazi laboratory where the latter try to create super soldiers as their last resort. However, the film does not reveal how they plan to get the super soldiers march on their beat because when the soldiers break free, they are attacking everyone and everything. It can be said in advance that the protagonists make the birth of the super soldier army quite difficult if not impossible for the Nazis.
The Nazis have often been linked to the fascination with the occult and to the most insatiable theories, but, as with most conspiracy theories, the reality turns out to be as nothing compared to that. Fortunately, in pop culture and especially in movies, there are no such boundaries, and, figuratively speaking, a filmmaker can shoot from every possible cannon and offer viewers a pure and shiny escapism. Therefore, it doesn’t make sense to pick at small details such as how our protagonist succeeds in getting in the guards-infested secret laboratory, get acquainted with the most secretive experiments without anyone noticing, saving the brother-in-arms and then, on top of all that, getting away smoothly, while at the same time the whole premise of the film is a total absurd. It’s a good idea to leave the common sense behind the cinema door and take the movie as it is. As the main drawback, I would point out the fact that being carried away by the movie I ate all the beef jerkies I had with me in the first ten minutes of the movie.
*Big-budget compared to the predecessors of this type of films – in today’s context, the 38 million dollar budget is rather low.
