A thousand year army needs a thousand year soldiers (Overlord 2018)

214.

Overlord

 

 

 

 

 

7/10

 

 

A horror that gave me a little bit of excitement once I read that it was coming out. One of the first games that I remember being into was Return to Castle Wolfenstein and this movie looked like an absolute twin to that game. Now there is no promise of it being just as good, following the storyline or even being a good horror, all I cared about was that it looked like it could be. Always a sucker for horror, I couldn't wait until the time went to watch the movie.

 

The story followed a group of American soldiers, heading behind the enemy line to take down a radio tower. Knowing there's a chance they wouldn't make it out is the least of their problems. In the old French town that they need to make it into, lies a secret that they wish they never came across. It turns out that the Nazi's are running experiments on the local. These involve draining the poor buggers because there is something in the land that they live and pouring this blood into the Nazi soldiers, creating some sort of super zombie Nazi army.

 Good one Hitler you crazy bastard. Once our main villain takes a bullet to the face, he ends up taking a needle of the good stuff and sorting himself out. This guy is the only one that I do recognise, playing Theon Greyjoy's uncle in A Game of Thrones. This is now the part of the game I loved. Just like this movie, it started as a normal war storyline, taking a dark turn with all sorts of disgusting soldiers heading to kill the good guys. Obviously, we know the outcome. Our guys save the day by bringing down the labs, radio tower and whatever else was in the tunnels below. If you went into this movie thinking that is was going to be a war movie, you'd have been dead wrong.

 There was such a creepy and dark aspect brought about halfway through the movie that really turned this story on its head. I can imagine the unsuspecting audience would have had the same look on their faces as the soldiers, once they seen their first zombie on screen. This sort of cross over has only really been done on movies that have gone straight to DVD.

The look of this movie was exactly as I expected. There was the war aspect to begin, looking like something fresh of the beginning of a Call of Duty game and then as the team made their way below, the story turned downwards towards hell too. With pitch-black corridors, old ruins, plenty and I mean plenty of gore, this was a clever twist to a zombie movie which usually depicts some slow walking gormless bastards. There was plenty of action, killing and explosions to brighten up our screens at the right time, keeping this as an action-packed horror. It was always going to be an interesting idea when J.J Abrams is involved. He never likes normal.

This movie will go well below the radar and maybe not be successful in any real way but for me, the nostalgia that came from this movie became a massive talking point amongst my friends. It would be very interesting to see which mission this gang of soldiers were sent onto next after seeing the horrors that they had scene.