San Francisco Chronicle

WWII plus zombies somehow stumbles

- Michael Ordoña is a Southern California freelance writer. By Michael Ordoña

Nazis! Zombies! Nazi zombies! Sounds awesome, right? Unfortunat­ely, the movie that just unspooled in your mind is probably better than “Overlord.”

The J.J. Abrams-produced war/sci-fi/horror flick takes that fun premise and goes nowhere. Not that it’s a new idea: “Dead Snow” and “Call of Duty” are among the bestknown such movies and video games. “Overlord,” however, is too predictabl­e to elicit the fun of either.

Sensitive paratroope­r Boyce (Jovan Adepo) and a few buddies, along with mysterious new guy Ford (Wyatt Russell), drop behind enemy lines in advance of the invasion of Normandy. They meet a French woman (Chloe, played by Mathilde Ollivier) who hates Nazis and joins up with the GIs. The good guys run afoul of Wafner (Pilou Asbaek of “Game of Thrones”), the most evil of the evil Nazis.

Next thing you know, they’re breaking into an evil lab where evil experiment­s are being conducted, and … voila, the monsters and the zombies!

The enjoyment one wants from GIs fighting these creatures is stunted by the film’s lack of energy and imaginatio­n. Director Julius Avery goes to the startle-scare early and often. Every turn, every beat feels too familiar. The writers didn’t bother researchin­g period lingo. Characters do idiotic things to enable plot devices. The screaming and gunfire seem excessive for a stealth mission. And the whole undead thing simply doesn’t pay off. At least the makeup effects are quite good.

Russell, the son of actor Kurt Russell, has inherited his father’s steely-eyed, mean-guyon-a-mission look. Asbaek is fun, Ollivier is sympatheti­c. But lead Adepo is apparently directed to play much of the film wide-eyed and mouth agape; there are no levels for Boyce, so none for us either.

“Overlord” leaves a wealth of possibilit­ies unmined. One imagines it was more compelling as pitch than finished product.

 ?? Peter Mountain ?? Jovan Adepo as one of the GIs behind enemy lines in a Nazi-occupied German village before D-Day in “Overlord.”
Peter Mountain Jovan Adepo as one of the GIs behind enemy lines in a Nazi-occupied German village before D-Day in “Overlord.”

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