Overlord (2018) Revisited – Horror Movie Review

The episode of Best Horror Movie You Never Saw covering Overlord was Written by Andrew Hatfield, Narrated by Kier Gomes, Edited by Paul Bookstaber, Produced by John Fallon and Tyler Nichols, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

The channel covers so much from the ’80s and ’90s but the truth is, there’s more horror floating around now than ever before. With the rise of horror studios like Blumhouse or prestige studios like A24 realizing that horror can not only be profitable but award worthy, the theaters have no shortage of scary. That’s not even including streaming services like Tubi, Shudder, and even the big 4 going all in on either producing or showcasing horror on their platforms. A lot of these end up being successful but some of them flounder a bit, even when they deserve to soar. Today’s movie has good names in front of and behind the camera, a solid idea, good gore, and one hell of an underperformance at the box office. Today we look at the alternate WWII take Overlord (watch it HERE) and see why its one of the Best Horror Movies You Never Saw.

J.J. Abrams, love him or hate him, has contributed a lot to the worlds of both TV and Movies. He is heavily involved in both the Star Trek and Star Wars universes, something that seems quite at odds with one another, as he has directed films in both of the resent sequel or reboot series. He is also heavily involved in the Cloverfield and Mission: Impossible worlds with producing credits for both and he even directed Mission: Impossible III which set the series on its current course. One could argue that his small screen contributions are even better with creating the mega shows Felicity, Alias, Fringe, and his most popular, Lost. Before all that though, he wrote screenplays for things that nobody connects with him like Forever Young, Regarding Henry, Joy Ride, and even Armageddon. Sometimes though, he gets an idea that he is too busy to write or direct and it gets produced but is forgotten just as quickly as it comes out.

Back in 2013, J.J. Abrams had the idea and basic outline for the movie and tasked writer Billy Ray with the first draft of the script. Ray is the Oscar nominated writer for 2013’s Captain Phillips starring Tom Hanks. Ray had been around long before that starting with the screenplay for the Bruce Willis erotic thriller Color of Night followed by scripts for Volcano, Hearts War, Flight and movies following Overlord like Gemini Man and Terminator: Dark Fate. The screenplay would change over the years and Mark L. Smith would eventually be brought in to make touchups. Smith had already written Vacancy and The Revenant but not many other high-profile scripts.

Paramount Pictures actually bought the rights for it and were the ones to bring in Smith to finish the script. Abrams own Bad Robot productions also jumped on board and the cast was announced in April and May of 2017. Filming began in September of that same year and wrapped 4 months later in January of 2018. The movie opens in a cool black and white filter but quickly goes to color with a news reel style title card. We are in an American transport plane the day before D-Day and the soldiers are on a mission to knock out a radar jamming tower on top of a church behind enemy lines. We get a ton of different character introductions with many of the typical tropes. The nervous soldier, the stoic and quiet prickly one, the green ones, and the guy that talks way too much.

The plane is attacked, and we start losing soldiers left and right. It’s a cool homage to Aliens where a badass team of soldiers is introduced, only to have most of them quickly die before much of the action even happens. The ones that make it out before the plane blows up aren’t out of the woods yet either, both figuratively and literally. Body’s hang from the trees and Nazi soldiers patrol the woods looking for American soldiers. Eventually we come down to 4 soldiers with Ford, Boyce, Tibbet, and Chase. These soldiers are played by Wyatt Russell, Jovan Adepo, John Magaro, and Ian Caestacker. Russell may be the most famous and it shouldn’t be just because of his famous and iconic parents, Goldie Hawn and especially Kurt Russell. Wyatt had been working for a bit, even showing up in his dad’s mid-’90s movies Soldier and Escape From LA before showing up in things like Cowboys and Aliens, Cold in July, and 22 Jump Street. After this movie he would show up in the Marvel universe as Captain John Walker in Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

The remaining troops come across a woman named Chloe and she takes them into the town with their radio tower inside of it. She hides them in her home and it’s here that we start to realize something isn’t quite right. Many movies, from Frankenstein’s Army to Hellboy have dabbled with the idea of the Nazi war machine looking into the occult but Overlord manages to keep it fresh and suspenseful. Chloe’s mom has been experimented on in the Church by the Nazi’s, but we don’t know exactly why or what with. An officer comes by the house and assaults Chloe, but our good guys intervene, putting themselves and their mission at risk. We see more of these experiments and realize about the same time as the squad that their mission is far more important than just a radio tower.

We follow Boyce as he heads to the rendezvous point but he is forced to hide amongst a ton of dead bodies as the truck brings him into the lower levels of the church. He comes across something that doesn’t even seem human anymore and it’s a good showcase for the effects in the movie. While there is plenty that is achieved using CGI, there is also just fantastic make up and practical effects. The CGI is done well, too, not overwhelming the rest of the work done by the artists on set and it doesn’t make it look too fake or out of place either. Boyce finds the main experimentation room and also free’s one of his fellow paratroopers. The entire sequence is done with almost no dialogue and is a showcase for why we like Boyce.

Boyce makes it back with his brother in arms and a vial of…something. They grill the soldier they captured, Wafner, who only explains that it is all for the war and those experimented on are being given a chance to rise above what they once were to do great things. If Wafner looks familiar, its because he’s good at playing scumbag villains. He’s also the selfish Euron Greyjoy in Game of Thrones. He is clean shaven here but once you realize it, it’s hard to not see just how bad he is. After some light torture, Wafner attempts to escape while still covered in a mask and gets several shots off, one hitting Chase. As Chase dies, Boyce injects him with the syringe that he took from the church, but nothing happens…at first. Chase sits up in a start while still having problems breathing and asks for water. He downs an entire canteen, and everything seems normal before his veins pop and his body begins to contort.

He has to be put down and it’s another great mixture of CGI and practical effects. Wafner says they are zombies for the 1000-year Reich. Wafner escapes with Chloe’s little brother, and we get a quick but brutal action sequence before the remaining 3 decide to go after it all. Wafner, the radar, the factory, and every trace of the serum. Wafner takes the serum himself and begins to change. It’s different when you are alive, and he is now the super soldier that they were trying to make. In addition to the movies, we talked about, the whole film has a Return to Castle Wolfenstein feel, an early 2000’s sequel to one of the grand daddies of first-person shooters that added more occult elements than any of the previous games.

The team splits up and goes about taking out everything here and the movie does a really cool thing. Once the bomb is set with an 18-minute timer, the bomb explodes after 18 actual minutes. Chloe is able to find her brother and send him back to the village and one of the creatures escapes its cell. The movie splits the last half hour or so between supernatural horror film and daring war time escape in the same vein as The Dirty Dozen or even Saving Private Ryan when they are defending the town. Wafner has completely changed now into a supervillain, or Overlord if you will, and does a little bit of monologuing with Ford. There is a black tar that has run underneath the village for centuries and they were able to mix it with all the bodies from the great war to create the serum.

Ford is impaled on a meat hook near the center of the tar and is bleeding out. Wafner intends to torture him like they did to him back at the house. Boyce is able to buy Ford just enough time to get off the hook and since he knows he is dying; he takes an injection to fight Wafner serum to serum. Ford isn’t quite strong enough yet so Boyce blows Wafner into the tar and then is forced by ford to leave. Ford is turning fast, and Wyatt takes a serious page out of his dad’s book and channels some of his best character work. He lures the rest of the soldiers into the center room while Wafner pulls himself out of the well. Ford realizes that the Nazi’s shouldn’t have this power but really, neither should they. Boyce makes it out just as the explosion kicks in. The town is liberated, and the threat is over. Boyce lies to his superior officers to make sure everything stays that way.

The movie didn’t do well at all. It had its wide release on November 9th, 2018, and only made 41 million on its 38 million budget. While that sounds like it made money, when you factor in the time commitment and expectations it was a huge flop. Critics liked it and it seems to have been enjoyed by the audiences that did catch it in theaters but ultimately it came and went without much fanfare. The movie was originally rumored to be the 4^th Cloverfield film until Abrams publicly stated that it would be a stand-alone project. It’s possible that fans were disappointed that it wasn’t linked to the popular series on why the movie failed or perhaps it was the post October release window. 5 years later the movie is slowly building its reputation and continues to make money on blu ray and 4k physical media releases. Overlord has very little to trim and it’s nearly two hour run time feels brisk. With so much going for it, the movie deserves a second chance at life, much like the serum at the center of the story. Check it out if you want to see a great blend of horror and war that is absolutely one of the Best Horror Movies You Never Saw.

A couple previous episodes of the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series can be seen below. To see more, and to check out some of our other shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!