World War II in and of itself was fucking horrifying. Add zombies to the mix and it’s like pouring gasoline on an already raging fire. But somehow, despite its unconventional nature, Overlord manages to be a rarity in Hollywood: it’s a historical horror movie.

What’s even more surprising, is that it’s good. “Period, in general, doesn’t get much love in Hollywood,” says Australian director Julius Avery.

“They’re like ‘eh, that’s gonna cost a lot of money’ … Kudos to Paramount: they signed a cheque on this one. Hopefully, they take more risks and we get to make more of these films.”

Although the actual budget of Overlord itself is something the studio has been keeping pretty close to its chest, safe to say it ain’t small. Before you even factor in the sets, the explosions, the deep cast and the special effects, there’s the fact Overlord comes from Bad Robot. For those playing at home, it’s the production company established by Star Trek, Star Wars and Alias director J.J. Abrams. Outside of perhaps Blumhouse Productions (Get Out, The Purge, Paranormal Activity), Bad Robot have built a clever business model around genre-bending properties (Cloverfield), made by up and coming filmmakers (like Avery), for a mid-level production fee (usually within the $10M – $40M range).

Overlord benefits greatly from people investing in it, as so few historical horror movies are given a chance to succeed.

The Witch from 2015 is probably one of the rare exceptions, with Army Of Darkness, The Countess, Sleepy Hollow, Ravenous, Van Dieman’s Land and Ginger Snaps 3 more often proving the point.

“For me, just selfishly, what I wanted to do as a director was take a B-movie idea and give it A-level execution,” says Avery, whose debut film — crime thriller Son Of A Gun — also had that same quality with a cast including Ewan McGregor and Alicia Vikander.

“We use Operation Overlord on D-Day in WWII as a jumping off point, but the rest of the movie is completely fictional. That allowed us to play a bit more and go completely bonkers … It has a really intense war set piece in the beginning, but once you get into the town and discover the Nazi labs underneath the church, all bets are off. This is Indiana Jones on acid.”

It’s at that point Danish actor Pilou Asbæk, who has joined Avery on an Australian tour to promote the film, leans in with a devilish smile he utilises more than once as Overlord’s villain.

“I’m going to add to that,” he says. “It’s Saving Private Ryan on crack cocaine.”

Saving Private Ryan Meets 28 Days Later

Such hyperbole to describe a film might sound like marketing jargon rehearsed before a junket if it weren’t so entirely true in Overlord’s case.

During the movie you’re likely to find yourself mouthing ‘what the fuck’ at least seven times — probably more — and that’s a delightful thing to experience in the cinema in 2018. Premiering in Austin at Fantastic Fest in late September, critics too responded to the film’s balls-to-the-wall energy: so much so it even shocked Asbæk himself.

“I was so surprised with the reaction because it felt like holy shit, it’s a bunch of people who have not been recognised,” he says. “This is made for all those guys and women — that audience — who hasn’t been given anything these past couple of years with a budget, a story, a cast, and a crew like this before. Not everyone loves Marvel — I’m not saying a bad thing about Marvel, I love Marvel — but I also love horror and world war movies.”

Avery adds: “I like R-rated movies, you can push things, make them a little more edgy.”

Overlord looks like a decent Saving Private Zombie film.

— de la Haunted ? (@ThatManJean) October 1, 2018

Although not too edgy according to the film’s publicity department, who began briefing journalists ahead of the interviews on what they considered the correct terminology to describe Overlord. Within the horror genre, there is a sub-sub-genre of Nazi zombie movies that have a dedicated following: think the Dead Snow series, Outpost, Blood Creek, Zombie Lake, and dozens of others.

Given the filmmakers seem to be leaning hard into taking a cult idea and making it accessible to the mainstream, it’s a shame the promotional team seem so embarrassed by it.

“The terminology we’d like you to use is ‘undead super soldiers’ rather than ‘Nazi zombies’,” one of the publicists told me minutes before my scheduled slot (the sentiment was repeated on four more occasions by four different publicists).

This, naturally, was confusing as I pointed out: “Riiiiight … even though they are both Nazis and zombies?” To which the publicist replied: “We feel like they’re more undead super soldiers.”

Pending Doom

Technicalities aside, Avery says that as a fan of the Bad Robot catalogue it was exciting to play in their sandbox.

“Ultimately Bad Robot love taking the familiar and subverting it … When you go see one of their movies, you expect the unexpected. How I value a movie nowadays is if I go in and get surprised: that’s entertainment to me.”

One of the strengths of the movie is the colourful cast of characters, a structure recreated from ensemble genre pieces like Aliens, The Predator, Attack The Block and Scream. By caring about each individual, it makes their demise all the more felt as the movie follows the conventions of the genre.

“The feeling of pending doom in this movie is always there,” says Avery. “From the moment when the plane is shot down all the way to the end, you feel like anything could happen. I wanted people to really love these characters and invest in them, get behind them, before they’re dropped into hell … I think the way you get an audience to lean in, is when the bullets are flying, the explosions are happening, you need to care about your heroes because otherwise there’s no tension, there’s no jeopardy, you feel nothing for them.”

WAIT IS THAT A NAZI ZOMBIE MOVIE????

— demon gf amanda? (@Vissenya) October 8, 2018

As one of the key figures responsible for that jeopardy, it’s something Asbæk delighted in. “I love the antagonist because the antagonist is always the mirror of the protagonist,” says the Game Of Thrones star.

“If you do an antagonist who’s one dimensional, the lead will be one dimensional as well … I hope by 2020 we’re going to only make movies about villains and the good guys are gonna be the bad guys. That would be awesome: I think they’re starting to do it with Venom.”

Overlord is out in Australian cinemas on November 8.

—

Maria Lewis is a journalist, screenwriter and author of It Came From The Deep and the Who’s Afraid? novel series, available worldwide.