“Overlord” is a war/horror movie based in World War Two. As part of the D Day invasion, paratroopers are sent in behind enemy lines. The group is given the job of destroying a radio tower in a French village. Only a few of them survive the landing, and they soon realise they have run into something far more dangerous than a mere radio tower guarded by enemy soldiers.

The story starts out as a war drama. The men are in a plane, and are going to be parachuting out behind enemy lines, as part of Operation Overlord (hence the title). It’s a well shot sequence, with the planes coming under heavy fire and many of them being hit, including the plane our characters are in. This necessitates them jumping from a burning plane. The effects are good here, giving the audience a stunning and exciting set piece to start the film off with a bang.  I liked that the film gets right into it – there was no drawn-out introduction of the characters like movies often do. This made for a tighter story.

This is also the best place to mention a glaring error in the plot – there were no racially integrated units during World War Two. Many white soldiers would not even have spoken to a black soldier if they happened to come across one. The presence of the black character, as well as the mostly comfortable way the other soldiers treated him, was not indicative of how things were during World War Two.

The main character, Boyce (Jovan Adepo), while out looking for two of his fellow soldiers, sees a number of apparently disfigured people being taken from a truck, and torched with flame throwers. He is naturally horrified by this. While running away from a dog, he hops into the back of a German truck (which seems like a staggeringly stupid thing to do, dog or no dog) and finds himself on a pile of dead bodies, members of his unit among them. He gets past all the gates and guards and into the castle (where the radio tower they are supposed to be destroying is), and starts sneaking around, one assume with the end of finding a way out without being caught. He comes across a laboratory. It has been hinted earlier in the film, and this is where the Nazi doctor with the nasty lab is confirmed. The effects involved to depict some of these experiments are excellent and they are suitably horrifying.

The French woman’s aunt is in the house and she tells them the woman is ‘sick’. Boyce finds out that the woman is disfigured and apparently mindless (this is before he sees the other test subjects). However, it is never explained how the woman was able to retrieve her aunt and keep her in the house, when other test subjects are killed. We might guess that the creepy German commander who has the hots for her maybe allowed this, but it isn’t stated. Consequently it remains an unexplained potential hole in the plot.

The evil Nazi doctor conducting fiendish experiments is something of a cliché. That being said, that Nazis conducted human experiments, that their reasons were often very strange, and that many of the higher ranks were weirdly obsessed with the occult, is a matter of record. So it is a plausible cause for the nasty goings on they are about to discover. Boyce finds a number of syringes with a substance in it and steals one. This sets up the way they find out exactly what the Nazis are up to, when he injects one of their number who has just died, and he revives.

Later zombies seem mindless and out of control. They are also cannibals, ticking off all the usual zombie  tropes. They are also extremely hard to kill, which explains the flamethrowers (and one of the characters needs to use a flamethrower later in the movie). But when the soldier they inject first revives, he knows exactly who he is. It seems to be a gradual process, that as he discovers what has happened he gets more and more hysterical and violent until he is out of control, and they need to kill him for their own safety. I found this an interesting idea, as zombie movies usually have the change happening in seconds.

It is also interesting that the commandant, when he injects himself, retains his sense of self. He, of course, is still alive (though badly and possibly fatally wounded), so we must assume this is what makes the difference. As he is a true-believer Nazi type this gives him the opportunity to chew the scenery with some ‘we are the master race’ speech.

While the actors all did their best with the material, the script fails to flesh out the characters much at all. As a consequence there are several stereotypes we might come to expect in movies like this – the main character, who doubts his ability to kill and be a soldier but finds he can; the rude one who doesn’t like kids but ends up saving and liking the child they come across; the French woman who hates the Germans and helps the Americans; the leader (corporal) who is ruthless and has a mysterious past; the German leader who is a Nazi, a rapist, a murderer etc. I don’t think this ruined the film, but I do wonder if a more fully rounded script might have made it a lot better.

It falls foul of a cliched climax and ending. The corporal doesn’t want to worry about the lab as this is ‘not their job’ but ends up realising it has to be included. The big finale is predictable, and the final scene is cringingly cliché. This is disappointing as it has been mostly extremely entertaining.

I was not really expecting this to be a good movie, and I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be much more than I expected. Don’t expect it to be marvellous – it is firmly in the B movie category. But if you’re looking for some action-filled horror, this is entertaining, and I would recommend it.