Directed by Julius Avery

Produced by J. J. Abrams and Lindsey Weber

Starring Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Mathilde Olivier

Overlord is a movie that would have worked great as a 30 min short, but doesn’t have enough to justify it’s 106 minute runtime. There’s just no excuse for this movie to have been pushed to feature length with as little material as it has. The opening with our main guys being dropped into Nazi territory the day before D Day is a good one, even really good actually. With its rather low budget of $38 million (and JJ Abrams as a producer), I was impressed what they did with the visuals. I liked how the leads were introduced, and I liked the terror and mayhem of the paratrooping sequence. Kinda reminded me a little of Band of Brothers.

Most of Overlord is very well crafted. Great camerawork and lighting, and fantastic sound design and gore effects (the few times they are there). And then as the movie goes you’ll be asking the same question I did, how can a film that looks this good be so boring?

There’s just not much going on. Our guys have a mission to blow up a radio tower hidden in a German church. They end up stumbling on a lab where the Nazis have been experimenting on people to create the ultimate soldier. “A thousand year soldiers for a thousand year reich”, the main Nazi officer villain spouts, something like that. I guess that’s what they were going for. The serum brings people back from the dead, but also deforms them, and maybe grants eternal life? Super strength too. Okay.

Did I say they? I meant just one guy. The lead. Boyce. The way he uncovers and finds this lab is basically how the whole movie ends up being. Way too much time is spent on him just looking at things that aren’t that appealing to begin with. He’s looking at the Nazis. Then he’s looking around in the underground lab, which he gets into after sneaking into a car carrying corpses from failed experiments because a German Shepard starts chasing him. And then he’s in the lab and just keeps looking around. And the movie thinks it’s aweing you, and there are only one or two super cool horror effects here. And yet he wanders around for what felt like over 20 minutes. The movie doesn’t realize how boring any of this is.

Earlier, in similar voyeuristic fashion, Boyce and another soldier played by Wyatt Russell (Kurt Russell’s son!) watch a German officer about to take advantage of a French woman who they have just befriended. They watch through the creaks in the attic above (opposite of Inglorious Basterds?). But Boyce keeps trying to get up to intervene. Russell stops him because he will give them away. But it keeps going back from that to the Officer. And Boyce keeps getting up to stop him, and Russel keeps stopping Boyce. I dunno, I’m bringing this up cause it just dragged on. And eventually Boyce does stop him. It drove me mad trying to figure out who plays the Nazi officer here. It’s Pilou Asbaek, who was Euron Greyjoy (I am the storm). Whew, glad I solved that.

Too much of this movie is spent on looking at things, rather then things happening. That strong opening is where the movie peaks. And yeah, the action is all great and flows well in the entire movie actually. But what’s the point? To stop that same Nazi officer from building an army of what, super soldier that resemble zombies? This is not the Nazi zombie movie you think it is.

And of course the Nazi officer injects himself with the serum and battles our guys. And we learn nothing about the doctor who is barely established. And there’s nothing special really about this serum at all. Just like there’s not much special about this movie. A couple of cool visuals and practical effects, and then about an hour of….looking. We needed more “zombie” effects, and more gross out horror if that’s what you’re gonna market this for.

So you just skip this one for now. When it comes to redbox you can watch that cool opening and tune out for just about the rest of the runtime. What a shame, the actors were pretty interesting and I’d have liked them a lot more if the movie did too. It was well scored also, for the most part. Just a shame. And I loved the moment with the flamethrower. And then the movie has some humor involving a soldier and a little kid, but then forgets it was able to be funny.

And then, after all this looking that the movie subjects you to, it ends with a one take explosion scene of our main guy outrunning it. Then maybe minutes later the whole movie ends out of nowhere, and Bridging the Gap by Nas plays for the credits. The hell?