Interestingly, this was not the movie I intended to review, but the one I started was so convoluted that halfway through I stopped. Not giving up on it, but I need to restart and watch it as intently as I do a subtitled movie (I think there was even some subtitles in it!)

But Overlord. Now when I first looked into this, it was touted as a J.J. Abrams movie. Which has me mixed, but he is just a producer on it. So it’s not really his movie. Plus it’s a war movie. I’m not a big war movie fan.

Here’s the deal though. I firmly believe that a good horror movie is most often one rooted in reality. Being grounded is important, because it gives us that moment of “This could happen…”

Our story takes place at the tail end of WWII, and starts on a plane full of paratroopers being sent to take out a communications jamming tower right before D-Day forces are going to storm the beaches. The conditions of trying to fly in and parachute down into an enemy city when they know you are coming is crazy. The plane comes under fire and paratroopers are dying before they get a chance to jump out of the proverbial frying pan.

Our main character Boyce manages to get out the door moments before the plane explodes. But dodging bullets from below and shrapnel from above isn’t easy. A water landing doesn’t make things much better, except once he gets on land he sees many of his colleagues got hung up in trees and were then executed in a spot they couldn’t escape. After a few tense encounters, he winds up part of a small squad of survivors with Ford leading them. A French woman named Chloe sees them and becomes conscripted to their group to prevent potential exposure before the mission is done.

Boyce manages to accidently infiltrate the church underground below their target and not only discovers atrocities being manufactured by the Nazi’s, but also rescues a friendly face from the plane. Boyce’s time in the underground reminded me of the old game Castle Wolfenstein, as he tried to evade troops and medical staff while looking for a way back out.

Things escalate on more than one occasion. But we know history. The good guys win, the bad guy zombies are put down and buried under the rubble of the church and tower they had come to blow up. And hey, you’re in the military, so the reward for surviving the horrific ordeal is you get assigned to a new squad and sent back out. It pays to be lucky… I guess?

For me, this ranks very high in the Horror-War sub genre (notables for me are Deathwatch (so good), Dead Snow (sorta), American Werewolf in London (so dream sequence)(I actually thought I had a fourth, but as I was typing away, it escaped into the void. If you have any, leave a comment!)) This is absolutely a movie I would watch again, and want to have on my DVD shelf (because streaming is never as good as owning.)

Doing my typical thing here of not straying too deep into spoilers on a movie I enjoy. I want you to experience it. This is a really good, solid movie. I’m thinking 9 stars. Because 10 is so hard to give out (says the guy who gave Deadpool Wolverine both a 10 and a disclaimer about it being a terrible story!)