Overlord

Overlord (2018)

Dir. by Julius Avery

Written by Billy Ray, Mark L. Smith

Starring Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Mathilde Ollivier, John Magaro, Pilou Asbæk

I have a special fascination with genre hybrids, and, of course, particularly with horror genre hybrids. And there is no shortage of these; horror is an almost endless malleable genre, able to absorb other tones, styles, iconography, and structure, which makes almost unlimited mash-ups possible. I’ve seen horror/comedy, art-horror, action-horror, horror-westerns, horror/romances, horror/crime, sci-fi/horror, superhero horror, even horror documentary, just to name a few. These genre-straddling exercises can be fun because they shake up the usual formula and expectations we have for stock fiction structure, but they’re even more interesting to me as experiments with the very medium of genre. Smashing different tropes together and seeing what survives can be revealing about the nature of the genres themselves: why they work, what they mean, what elements are essential to the mechanism, and what elements turn out to be surprisingly replaceable. Consequently a WWII-men-on-mission movie crossed with a zombie/mad science flick sounded right up my ally. Not, of course, that it would be the first war/horror hybrid I’d ever seen, nor even the first Nazi zombie flick I’d ever seen (they go back to fucking 1941’s KING OF THE ZOMBIES and its first sequel, and run comfortably through 1966’s THE FROZEN DEAD and 1977’s SHOCK WAVES to 1981’s ZOMBIE LAKE to modern schlock like 2009’s DEAD SNOW). Still, the men-on-a-mission element (a venerable subgenre in its own right) struck me as a good angle, as did the historical setting. If OVERLORD could hardly boast at being the first to get here, I still thought there was a solid chance it could generate something interesting from its motley collection of genre elements.

Or at least, I did until I saw it was a JJ Abrams production. OK, he didn’t direct it (that would be Julius Avery, his sophomore film after the go-nowhere crime thriller SON OF A GUN) or write it (that would be Billy Ray, of a very weird career that begins with THE COLOR OF NIGHT and runs from the laughably inept VOLCANO and SUSPECT ZERO to the rather classy STATE OF PLAY and Oscar-nominated CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, and Mark L. Smith, who has a much more consistent resume of middlebrow horror trash except that he co-wrote the fucking REVENANT!). But even from the trailer, I could see that this would be a strictly Abrams affair. By which I mean, slick, flashy production and a relentlessly overthought structure hiding the fact that there isn't any real content at the center of it all. That Abrams touch.

Sure enough, that’s exactly what happens here. Despite OVERLORD's near-constant attempts to twist itself into shapes convoluted enough that they might elicit a flicker of mild surprise, the only actual unexpected thing about the movie is how long it takes for the genre-hybrid element to enter the picture. It’s a men-on-a-mission WWII story for much longer than it’s a horror movie, and it’s surprisingly committed to that war movie angle --at least financially, which is the only meaningful measure of intent here—obviously spending a good portion of its ample budget on rather extravagant battle scenes, as well as a Bokeem Woodbine (WISHMASTER 2: EVIL NEVER DIES) cameo. Some of it is rather nicely appointed; the aerial battle that opens the film is efficient enough to be exciting in a empty sort of way, and the cinematography by Laurie Rose (every Ben Wheatley film) and Fabian Wagner (JUSTICE LEAGUE) is perfectly handsome, if a bit bland. But of course the movie-killing problem here is that this is not a men-on-a-mission film; we know from the damn poster that this is all just a feint, that their war movie chicanery is a prelude to an abrupt swerve towards an altogether different kind of movie (the kind with Nazi zombies, AKA the kind of movie that you’d actually be interested in watching). Consequently, any real investment we might have in the first half of the movie is stillborn. The cast is adequate, but nowhere near committed enough to instill their one-note characters* with anything that would independently be worth our time, and so a huge portion of the film just becomes a tedious waiting game while they coyly tease that we’re eventually gonna get to the good stuff.

And then, finally, we get there, and… the movie suddenly ends! After more than an hour of teasing us with some good old fashioned Nazi zombie fun, we officially learn about the existence of experimental Nazi super-zombies and then easily dispatch them (as well as a couple hundred of their living colleagues) in what feels like 20 minutes of a overlong 110. It feels unbalanced, like the movie is missing an act or something. They finally get to the zombies, and then jump right into the big climactic fight scene (which isn’t really any great shakes itself, though there’s a gruesome CGI-assisted facial wound which is pretty cool) without any warm-up.

That leaves us with a movie which pretty much spends its whole runtime threatening to happen without ever getting there. A movie which has a lot of stuff in it, but never commits to any one thing enough to make an impact. A movie which is all conspicuously moving parts hiding an empty center. A mystery box with no mystery. You know, a JJ Abrams production. I’d still be interested someday in seeing a men-on-a-mission/horror hybrid,** but this isn’t really a hybrid at all. You’d have to be two things to be a hybrid, and this isn’t enough of anything to make for an interesting experiment.

*Or less; the movie can’t seem to make up its mind about what Wyatt Russell’s single note is even supposed to be, and he vacillates wildly from badass cynic to straight-up villain with no real logic or benefit to the story.

** There are, of course, already a couple; DOG SOLIDERS, for example, or DEAD BIRDS, THE SUPERNATURALS, THE BUNKER, THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2 (2007). But not too many prominent examples.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2019 CHECKLIST!

For Richer or Horror

TAGLINE	IMDB says Stop The Unstoppable, but I didn’t notice that on any of the posters.
TITLE ACCURACY	It’s supposed to take place during operation Overlord but other than that there’s not a lot of reason for that to be the title, especially in light of the existence of the 1975 British docu-drama OVERLORD, which is actually about the real Operation Overlord and uses real war footage, and also happens to be one of the greatest war movies ever made.
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	None
SEQUEL?	None
REMAKE?	None.
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Zombie, Nazi-Zombie, mad science
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	Bokeem Woodbine?
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	None
NUDITY?	None.
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	Yeah the lead Nazi gets really gross and rapey with a captive French resistance member. Did they really not think we had enough reason to hate this character?
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	No
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	Zombies, although of a mad-science sort
POSSESSION?	None
CREEPY DOLLS?	None
EVIL CULT?	None
MADNESS?	None
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	Yes
VOYEURISM?	Our boys spend much time –like, too much time, in fact-- hidden in an attic watching Nazi soldiers stand around and act like assholes to the homeowner downstairs.
MORAL OF THE STORY	Now more than ever we need to take the time to appreciate how baller FRANKENSTEIN’S ARMY was.