Overlord 4K UHD Review
“Overlord” is exactly what you think it is.
“Overlord” is set the day before D-Day and revolves around a squad of paratroopers assigned to take out a German radio tower. To say their mission doesn’t go as planned is an understatement. While en route, the plane is shot down with only 5 soldiers surviving the ordeal. Worse still, the soldiers stumble across Nazi zombie esque human experimentations. With the help of a French woman/allie named Chloe, the small group has to carry out their mission and stop these vicious mutated people.
Produced by J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot, “Overlord” is somewhat of an outlier in today’s movie world in that it’s a bit of a risky project. You certainly don’t see many mid-range budget, hard R, horror-war films with a non-star cast. For that reason alone, the movie deserves some respect. As it turns out, the movie itself is also a rather respectable dark and intense comic booky B-Movie throwback with shades of of John Carpenter films like “The Thing.” Heck, even Kurt Russell’s son Wyatt Russell stars in this movie essentially channeling his father at times! Basically, this has future cult movie written all over it.
As for the content of the film, the script by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith is simple and not particularly surprising, but it delivers in what it sets out to do. It really does play like “Saving Private Ryan” with zombies. Expect to see a lot of horror, gore, and war movie tropes, but the movie also has a reasonable amount of characterization to boot. You care just enough about these characters and that’s all you can really ask for.
As I mentioned above, there are no big names to be had here, but there are plenty of respected character actors and rising stars like the aforementioned Russell Wyatt, Bokeem Woodbine, John Magaro, Jovan Adepo, Pilou Asbaek, and Mathilde Ollivier. Everyone here is game for the project and they all deliver quality performances.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the movie is the production values and visual effects. It’s quite amazing what director Julius Avery and the production team were able to accomplish on a relatively low budget (a reported 38 million). The movie looks like it has a bigger budget than it does (especially the opening plane sequence).
Video/Audio:
Presentation: Widescreen 2160p with HDR. How does it look? This 4K disc handles the specific color scheme exceedingly well.
Audio Track: Dolby Atmos. How does it sound? This track does not disappoint. When the action kicks in, the Atmos sound roars to life.
Extras:
* Blu-ray copy
* Digital copy
* “The Horrors Of War”- A 6 part extra that delves into the script, the visual effects, the plane sequence, the ground battles, the horror aspects, the characters, etc. Expect to see plenty of in-depth set footage and interviews as well.
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