American paratroopers sweeping into occupied France to pave the way for the D-Day invasion face off against Nazi monsters of every sort in Julius Avery’s glorified B-movie—a silly comic-book action-horror flick that delivers a punch. Overlord focuses on a battalion—including stars Jovan Adepo and Wyatt Russell—tasked with taking out a radio tower atop a church steeple in an occupied French village. They find an ally in a young woman whose house they use as the staging area for their planned assault. But danger intervenes in the person of a vicious Nazi officer and a mad scientist who is engaged in an experiment to create German super-soldiers from the dead, using the corpses of village inhabitants as guinea pigs. Inevitably, mission creep sets in: the Americans decide to destroy the gruesome project as well as the radio tower, and the movie morphs into a combination of conventional combat tale and walking-dead horror flick, replete with special effects. No one could reasonably claim that Overlord is a good movie—it is far too ridiculous—but horror genre fans will consider it a blast, although others will find it tasteless and crass (actually, it’s all three). Recommended. [Note: Blu-ray extras include the behind-the-scenes featurettes “Death No More” (12 min.), “Creation” (11 min.), “Death on the Ground” (9 min.), “Death Above” (7 min.), and “Brothers in Arms” (5 min.), as well as bonus DVD and digital copies of the film. Bottom line: a solid extras package for an over-the-top guilty pleasure.] (F. Swietek)
Overlord
Paramount, 109 min., R, DVD: $30.99, Blu-ray/DVD Combo: $39.99, Feb. 19
Overlord
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