Overlord is a UFO from the mind of Julius Avery. Produced by Bad Robot, J.J. Abrams, the film was originally supposed to be the new installment in the Cloverfield saga. But the production changed its mind and finally Overlord is a work in its own right carried by the young Jovan Adepo.
Two distinct parts
Julius Avery chose to divide his film into two distinct parts. The feature film begins with an ultra classic war film. After a beautiful opening scene entirely pumped on Edge of Tomorrow, Overlord embarks on an infiltration of Americans in a German base. Nothing surprising. The clichés of the genre will pile up, American, French and German caricatures arrive at a gallop, and the adventures are not of an overflowing imagination. Far from the great war movies, Overlord bores quite a bit in its first half against this wise and redundant guerrilla war.
Then comes the second part. This is why Overlord is banned at least 16 years old. A gory and off-putting mess of wild scientific experiments on the human body. He is not the first to make this kind of choice, an intense fracture in the middle of the film to offer two stories in one, two diametrically opposed styles. The supreme example remains A Night in Hell where Tarantino and Rodriguez have fun like crazy. Unfortunately, the transition between the two styles is not marked enough in Overlord, and remains too blurred to fully appreciate the horror part. Horrific ideas are not detestable. Ultra impressive transformations are offered to the viewer, but their appearance time is too succinct, too rare, even shy. Yet when Chase (Iain de Caestecker) transforms, Julius Avery finally holds something. He holds a particularly shocking and impressive vision of horror that he will never fully develop. This is finally the big problem of Overlord, he does not assume totally…
An approach that is sorely lacking in second degree…
Let's say it right away, Overlord is a potential B series. An abracadabrantesque story, characters that are not necessarily lights, relatively clichéd situations, but a funny concept of the most saving. We feel that the budget of Overlord is not huge, and that the scenario remains fragile. However, this idea of cutting the film into two parts is far from stupid. Unfortunately,the war film part takes up too much space compared to the horror part. The meanders of the dark corridors of the church are too long overdue, in favor of action sequences or repetitive dialogues. Overlord is relatively misleading. Those expecting a horror movie will be disappointed. Overlord offers 1h30 of war film for 20 minutes of pure horror, which also sometimes lacks credibility, almost parodic. Which is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, especially for the B series. But at that moment, Julius Avery must distill a foolproof self-mockery, must not take himself seriously and sign a pop and crazy work. On the contrary, Overlord is seriously boring and wastes its comico-horror potential. And Julius Avey does not fully assume his ban at least 16 years old as the feature film is not bad. The horror and gore effects are relatively affordable and one still wonders why the film carries this ban in the face of relatively bland violence.
Overlord starts as a bad war movie, at least ultra classic, before ending up in a passable B series. We regret that the film does not assume completely, preferring a serious boring than the madness necessary to the series B vachardes and gore. Too bad.
