Madison: Quite frankly — I loved Overlord. I haven’t been this pleased with a zombie movie since World War Z. It was fun, quirky, well filmed, had some good jumps, and was an all around good time for me.
Cole: Shhhh. Don’t tell them it’s a zombie movie. I only saw one (very vague and messy) trailer before seeing it and I think that’s why I loved it so much. The scene where the bad guy reveals his final form was so fucking rad that I audibly said: “fucking rad” in the theater. But I have seen him in some promotional stuff since and I think that neuters the effect.
Madison: The entire opening sequence called back to WWII classics like Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan. With a plot as simple as land and take out a radio tower before the troops arrive on the beaches, director Julius Avery can focus on curating a fantastic cinematic experience. I thought everything from the sound design, cinematography, color, lighting, and acting was spot on. What surprised me was how each character was simple yet felt enjoyably real.
Cole: Dude the character work is awesome. Not your typical zombie movie because I actually cared when people were put in peril. You could tell people apart without them having to be cartoons or relegated to their jobs on the Zombie Fighting Team™.
Madison: How would you compare this to other Zombie films like Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead?
Cole: Woah, woah, woah. I wouldn’t. This is a serious take and the ‘zombies’ are more contextualized master race Nazi experiments than a funny brain-eating horde. I liked your war movie comparisons earlier more than zombies ones.
Madison: Completely agreed. The whole zombie idea was played totally straight and felt more like a serious threat. Although I had to check a series like The Man in the High Castle that takes a real examination of Nazi ideologies at the door. Couldn’t imagine real-life Nazis actually utilizing something so horrifically un-human as their main tool for a thousand-year Reich. I don’t know, maybe I don’t know my occult-Nazis well enough.
Cole: Well then let’s explore. I’m pretty sure my Nazi knowledge comes exclusively from Call of Duty. So zombies seemed perfectly normal to me.
Madison: Hahahaha, dude totally. Overlord is almost the movie version of taking zombie-mode in Call of Duty fully seriously. But that almost betrays how non-tongue-in-cheek this movie was.
Cole: Yeah there are definitely game-y movies that feel like they take you from level to level. This had more story structure than that. Really. The quality of the script is not what you would expect from the gory Nazi zombie movie.
Madison: And as a thriller Overlord was just fun to watch. I don’t fall for jump scares easy but a couple got me good. The friend I saw it with jumps real easy in scary movies and so he had a hard time staying in his seat. Everything worked so well to bring the movie together that it’s hard to believe I haven’t recognized Avery’s work before. From the opening with a historic Paramount logo displayed across the screen to the end, it just was so much fun.
Cole: And I think we’ve been highlighting the zombies too much. I have a buddy that still watches The Walking Dead and he said they promoted the hell out of Overlord during those commercial breaks, and I think those zombie fans will be disappointed. The beginning logo and introduction of characters on a plane flying over D-Day is really the tone of the movie. Not a zombie killing adventure.
Madison: That actually surprised me. (Cole: That The Walking Dead is still airing? Yeah. Me too.) I’d say this was a WWII movie about the execution of D-day with a zombie b-plot. I really thought zombies would a more significant part of the plot but it was an addition to an otherwise awesome story.
Cole: I probably would have thought that too if I had known more about the zombies going in. Especially because the last Nazi zombie movie I saw was Dead Snow, and that sucker had zero tact or subtlety what-so-ever. Two things that make Overlord an actually good movie. That happens to have fucking rad zombies.
Madison: I’m glad to see other directors taking pages from the Marvel playbook. One of the things that have made Marvel so successful is their ultimate goal is to make a good genre film that happens to have superheroes. This was a good genre WWII film that happened to have zombies.
Cole: Speaking of franchises, this was a Bad Robot/JJ Abrams production, and word on the street is that it was supposed to be a Cloverfield property. Do you think that would have enhanced or taken away from what we got?
Madison: Hard to say. If there was a Cloverfield connection I missed it entirely. But because it is Bad Robot I would love the hell out of a sequel that followed the thread of WWII with a continued threat of Nazi experiments leaking out.
Cole: The ending sort of sets it up, I guess, but I also took that as just ‘the war rages on’. There was such real character growth for Boyce being able to continue in the war, that a sequel might have to backtrack that. I’m always nervous about sequels, but maybe they could surprise me. Again.
Madison: Final takeaway. I think this is an instant cult classic that will satisfy film-lovers for years to come. It was so fun to watch that it feels like a movie I would consistently want to take off my shelf and pop some popcorn.
Cole: Not to spoil any future articles we’ll work on, but this is my favorite film of 2018 so far. The sound sounded better than the normal war movie award winners, the makeup looked better than normal horror gore, and the character work is up there with any closed in dramas.
Madison: Oh boy now I’m gonna have to start thinking about my year lists.
Cole: You’ve got a month and a half. And until then we have to get our other writers to go see Overlord.