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The director Julius Avery's "Overlord" begins with a spectacular parachute drop, a bombing of bombers, burning airplanes and flying body parts, and it ends with an even spectacular (and sometimes cathartic) pandemonium of exploding Nazis, geysers of blood and assorted creative impalements. In between, however, it is a fairly predictable, though still quite violent, action-horror hybrid about a small group of American soldiers behind enemy lines.
The year is 1944, the Allies are about to be in Normandy, and we are going to have a critical Nazi radio-jamming tower. The tower has been built atop a church, which seems to be like a classic villainous attempt by the Germans to use a religious site as a cover for a military outpost. But there may be more to it, as soon as we discover.
Private Boyce (Jovan Adepo) of the United States Army is the movie's nervous, newbie protagonist, always eager to do the right thing but derided by fellow soldiers for not being tough enough. Together with the battle-hardened Ford Corporal (Wyatt Russell) and the meager remnants of their unit, they are sneak into the small village where the tower is, and learn from a young woman (Mathilde Ollivier) that the occupying Germans regularly take unruly locals to the church for punishment.
What kind of punishment? That's best kept secret for now – the film was produced by J.J. Abrams, who likes to think of his stories "mystery boxes "- but let's just say that there are unidentifiable carcasses strewn in the forest, shadowy characters kept behind closed doors and a Nazi doctor who seems eager for freshly executed bodies.
The idea of merging a World War II with supernatural elements is certainly nothing new; abounds, from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to "The Keep" to the zombie thriller "Dead Snow." At times "Overlord" recalls these movies, and it also seems to be aware that its ostensibly twisty premise is actually fairly predictable: The film does not tell us so much about narrative revelations so much.
That results in a curiously undernourished story that at times feels like it's setting up mysteries and subplots that never go anywhere. Nevertheless, as seen in the film's terrifying opening and its climax cruesome, Avery deftly orchestrates some grisly, intense set pieces. He delivers on the thrills, even if the story leaves something to be desired.
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