Review: Overlord [2018] (Spoiler-free! kinda)

a (quick) review by the Azure-Winged Magpie.

Opening Thoughts

Wait a minute… this ISN’T called ClOverlord…?!

I really thought this was gonna be another one of those films that J.J. Abrams likes messing up because of his Cloverfield franchise or whatever. I mean the whole Cloverthing is interesting, and there’s a LOT to really read up on if you got interested after the first film, but 10 Cloverfield Lane was awesome and got messed up by the whole Cloverpark angle and The Cloverfield Paradox was just shit (how do they even get all those good actors in that shit film?!). So I just want them to stop. (Stop plox).

And I totally thought that Overlord was one of them. But it’s not. That’s a good thing.

The trailer for Overlord had zombies, Nazis, and World War II stuff going on and it looked more like a film we should’ve had out for our Horror Month last month. But it only came out yesterday. And I went to watch it even though we’re done with horror films right now (but still have like two more to go).

So anyway… I walked in thinking it was a Cloverpatch flick and thought it was one up until I realised the film was over. And that was kinda a good thing. I think shoving Cloverbubble into this would have just gone and ruined everything.

BUT ENOUGH. Let’s talk about this film!

Note: The Crow’s got a few reviews to go, but since I’m taking a break late next week, I’m going to be running the show for the next few days.

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Overlord

WARNING: This section contains MINOR spoilers.

So, here’s the thing:

A buncha American soldiers drop into frog-land to blow up this radio tower on top of a church. But their plane gets blowed up instead.

So they get to the village after some pain and miserable-ness, and they meet this girl Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier). She tells them all about these “experiments“ the Nazis are getting up to beneath the church and it turns out that these experiments messed-up her auntie (like, made her all… ew and everything).

And that’s kinda it. The film’s just one huge train ride south from there on out.

But listen: the trailer kinda lied. This isn’t a shit-hits-the-fan-cos-zombies flick. I mean it is a little bit. But it really isn’t. This one’s more of a science horror film (?). And really… thank the Holy Magpies it has nothing to do with Cloverpool. It’s good as it is but let me talk details first.

The opening is one HELL of a BIG BOOM AWESOME SCENE! I mean… whoa. That whole scene (sequence?) is just SO tense and really got me on the edge of my seat. Like, I’m not kidding. I fell off.
(Like this. No. Not joking.)

And when everything calmed down and I was getting ready for the zombie action Cloverpuddle film I thought this was gonna be, this one thing happened that got me really… really quesy. Nazi-scum Waffner (Euron Batou) shows up and… uhhh…

If you thought uncle Greyjoy was a PERV, you ain’t done seen NOTHING yet. Hoo boy is he a rapey bastard. The whole thing was like under five minutes but it got me squirming. And I think that was the scene that got me realising I wasn’t in for what I thought I was. Oh birdy was that scene disturbing. It made me want to stick a fork into someone. And yeah… that kinda means uncle Batou did a damn good job here.

I’m not telling you exactly how the story goes but there’s a scene in which Chloe runs away from something (look up) after she sets the thing she runs away from up. And damn was that scene good. I didn’t think this was the kind of film in which they’d have a scene like that, but it was kinda… artsy…? I mean it’s not like it’s “SERIOUS CINEMA“ or anything but it was a pretty good thing for the film to have.

But what’s more important is that it was the kind of scene which made me want to cheer cos those Nazis needed some fucking comeuppance after all the shit uncle PERV got up to earlier. That poor foo deserved everything he got.

Give me a sec to talk about the other BIG DAMN HEROES of the story. We got Boyce (John Boyega Jovan Adepo). We got Ford (Wyatt Russell). We got Chase (Iain de Caestecker …what a name!). We got Dawson (Jacob Anderson). And we got Tibbet (John Magaro). They kinda jump in to the rescue and end capturing the evil rapey Naz-Naz and really get the story going. They’re all okay I guess, but they don’t really get a lot to do. It’s alright though, ’cause Boyce and Ford kinda do most of the important things. I think the acting was fine, but Chloe was bae from minute one. She’s my favourite character in the whole thing.

There’s not really that many zombies in this one like the trailers made me think, but I liked what they did with the ones they had. The sound is on point and the film looks real good. This looks better than 9 out of 10 zombie flicks I’ve seen and that’s saying a LOT. It’s not like Overlord‘s the best zombie flick ever (well, it isn’t at all) and it’s not like it’s gore-gore-gore, but it’s good for what it is. It’s a wicked-good action film with a LOT of tense moments and some nice (NICE!) jump scares. And that’s kinda it.

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Final Ratings

THE AZURE-WINGED MAGPIE: 7/10

THE CROW: TBD/10

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Here’s the official poster: