Macabre…ish Horror Review: Overlord
Overlord, 2018/ 1 hr 51 min.
A paratrooper squad is sent to destroy a German radio jamming tower located on top of a church. But the plane is shot down and most of them die in the crash. The rest, save four, are taken out by landmines and Nazis.
The very diminished team continue on and on the way they meet a woman from the village where the church is located, her name is Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier), and she gives them shelter in her house. Her aunt who’s wounded from experimentation and her 8 year old brother, Paul (Gianny Taufer) also lives there.
A Nazi patrolmen, Wafner (Pilou Asbæk), later coerces Chloe into sex by threatening to send her brother away for experimentation. Two of the remaining paratroopers, Boyce (Jovan Adepo) and Ford (Wyatt Russell), confront and restrain Wafner, with a gun to his head, while the other two, Tibbet (John Magaro) and Chase (Iain de Caestecker), are checking out the rendezvous site.
Later, on the way to the rendezvous point, Boyce, witnesses Nazis burning disfigured villagers and when they are forced to hide, they end up in a truck packed with human remains in it’s way into the church.
Under the church they find an underground base where the experimentation is done. Inside is a lab, operating room, cells, experiments and a pit of tar. There’s also a serum, Boyce takes a syringeful and they find another paratrooper, Rosenfeld (Dominic Applewhite), who was captured alive, strapped to a table, experimentation already begun on him. The two of them escape through the sewers with Nazis hot on their heels.
Upon returning to Chloe’s house, Ford tortures and demands Wafner tell them what the serum does, he refuses. When Wafner tries to escape, he kills Chase, Boyce then injects him with the serum because he saw dead men resurrected with it. It works but Chase mutates and soon turns violent and Boyce has to kill him again.
When another patrol happens they are in a shootout and though half of Wafner’s face gets shot off, he escapes, taking Paul as a hostage. Back at the lab, Wafner injects himself twice with serum. Even while a scientist is warning him it’s never been tried on the living.
Boyce suggests they destroy the church from the inside to include the lab. They, with Chloe, return to the church with a full frontal assault and sets up explosives. They boobie trap a soldier, taping him to his vehicle, loading him up with dynamite and a grenade, he blows up with a big group of soldiers as soon as someone untapes his mouth. The paratroopers and Chloe fight mutants and Nazis, then a mutated and unbelievably strong Wafner appears, over powers Ford and hangs him on a hook.
Wafner tells them that the villagers remains are used to distill the centuries old tar, enabling them to create the serum. The plan is to create immortal and invincible soldiers for the Third Reich, thousand year soldiers for the thousand year reich.
Ford makes the decision to lock himself in with Wafner and all the specimens so they do not get out and orders Boyce to continue with the plan to level the place.
This was directed by Julius Avery. It is a revisionist war movie but it’s good! The movie is almost 2 hrs long but it moves fast. There are a lot of good fight scenes, monster scenes, and battle scenes. The action and drama is broken up well and spread out pretty evenly. Good monster effects, physical effects and what would be kill effects if people actually died from their injuries lol. Very good cast too! Chloe is a tough cookie and all the black people don’t die first.