Featured Blu-ray and DVD Review: Overlord

February 18, 2019

Overlord - Buy from Amazon: DVD, Blu-ray Combo Pack, or 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack
Video on Demand

Overlord

Overlord was one of two films that came out this past fall that looked stylish and engaging, but failed to find an audience in theaters. The other film was Bad Times at the El Royale, which I loved. Will I be as entertained this time around? Or were audiences right to stay away?

The Movie

We are first introduced to a number of paratroopers as they are being flown into enemy territory. It’s D-Day and they are flying into enemy territory to jump to a small French village. Once there, they will take out the radio jamming tower the Nazis built on top of a Church to help the Allies air force be at peak effectiveness. We are introduced to several of them, but I’m not going to name any names, because... Just before they reach their target, the plane comes under heavy attack by anti-aircraft guns. The flak is so bad, they have to jump to a different target. Then, they’re hit and several soldiers are killed. When they are ready to jump, the plane is hit again killing most of the rest. A few do make it out of the plane.

This includes Private Boyce, the soldier we were spending the most time with before all hell broke loose. He barely survives his landing... splashdown is probably a more accurate term to us here. While searching for Jacob, whom he promised to stay with, he sees Sergeant Rensin surrounded by Nazis. He goes to intervene, but Corporal Ford stops him. As Ford points out, there were ten Nazis and only two of them, plus the mission isn’t to save the Serge, but to destroy that radio tower in time for the D-Day attacks. They head to the rendezvous point and meet up with three other paratroopers along the way: Private Tibbet, the sharpshooter; Private Chase, the photographer; and Private Dawson, who won’t be in the movie much longer.

The remaining survivors make their way to the mission. At one point, Tibbet and Chase find a corpse of something. Whatever it is, or was, isn’t quite right. Even Corporal Ford is taken aback at what they see. While they are examining the corpse, Boyce spots a woman walking in the woods. Ford tells the soldiers to get her, because they can’t let anyone inform the Nazis that they are there. That’s not a problem, as the woman, Chloe, hates the Nazis. She even agrees to lead them to her village, Cielblanc, the one where the radio tower is located.

Once there, Chloe leads the soldiers to her home, where she lives with her sick aunt and younger brother. Once there, they reassess their situation. There are a lot of Nazis around, including SS Hauptsturmführer Wafner, who is a high ranking SS officer, a little too high to be handling a simple radio tower. Then they witness a wife and husband dragged out of their home. The wife is executed and the husband is dragged away. Both Tibbet and Chase think the mission has gone south and that’s before Boyce see’s Chloe’s aunt and learns that she’s not sick exactly, but that the Germans did something to her.

We are about 30 minutes into the movie and up to this point, it’s been a relatively standard, if well executed, World War II special mission action film. However, we know it isn’t an action film, but a horror film. If you’ve seen the trailer, then you know about the horror elements, but how they are introduced is too deep into spoiler territory.

Before I get into the review, I have a message to all writers out there. If you use sexual violence to make your villain look extra evil, then you are a hack. Put down the pen and stop writing. Go to school, learn how to be a better writer, then try again.

Besides that misstep, Overlord is a very tense horror film. Granted, it wears its B-movie inspiration on its sleeve and this does make it less than original at times, while most of the characters are not fleshed out. Normally, this would be a serious problem, but again, the film takes its inspiration from B-movies, so if you are a fan of these movies, then Overlord will give you what you are looking for. There’s plenty of action, action that is at times very gory. And while the special effects can’t match movies that cost $100 million or more to make, they take the B-movie aesthetics and give it a modern polish.

It is still a Nazisploitation movie and some will find the subject matter distasteful, so keep that in mind.

The Extras

There is technically only one extra, but it is a six-part, 51-minute long making of mini-documentary. That’s impressive, for a film that barely made more at the worldwide box office than it cost to make.

The Verdict

Overlord is a grindhouse movie at heart, but with enough talent and money to make it work at a decent level. There’s not a ton of extras on the DVD, Blu-ray Combo Pack, or 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack, but the making of mini-documentary is substantial and lifts the overall value to the purchase level.

Filed under: Video Review, Bad Times at the El Royale, Overlord, Iain De Caestecker, Bokeem Woodbine, John Magaro, Pilou Asbaek, Eva Magyar, Wyatt Russell, Jacob Anderson, Jovan Adepo, Mathilde Ollivier, Gianny Taufer, Dominic Applewhite