Delayed Reaction: Overlord

Premise: On the eve of D-Day, a group of soldiers stumbles onto a facility with some Nazi experimentation creating monsters.

I think JJ Abrams does it right when it comes to producing and directing. Here's the sense I get for what his day is like. He's sitting around and thinks "A monster movie, but shot like it's found footage", or someone comes up to him and says "people crash on an island and mysterious stuff starts happening". He investigates the idea for a bit. Maybe he writes or directs an early episode or initial draft, then he hands it over to someone else when he gets bored or gets offered a Star Wars. Basically, he takes fun ideas and sees if they can be turned into full ideas. It's the career that 13-year-old Abrams would be so proud of (and I mean that as high praise). I know it's way more complex than that. He's a shrewd businessman and willing collaborator. It's no accident that he's been able to maintain this Bad Robot empire, but it sure is fun seeing the public face of it all.

Take Overlord for example. I just imagine someone came to him and said "D-Day, but it's a monster movie". It's virtually impossible for that premise to not end up as an entertaining movie. Maybe Abrams himself didn't have an idea for it, but he produced it and left it with people who did. Overlord doesn't get much deeper than being a genre exercise. The characters felt more like red shirts than people. It's well-shot in a familiar but entertaining way. I sort of wish I could've gone into this blind, so I could've gotten a From Dusk til Dawn type of surprise. In fact, I'm starting to see a real similarity between JJ Abrams and Quentin Tarantino. They don't have the same taste, but they seem to be equally driven by what they enjoyed when they were younger.

This movie benefits from having a mostly unknown cast. The only actors I recognized were the leads, Jovan Adepo (The Leftovers, Fences) and Wyatt Russell (Lodge 49, 22 Jumps Street). Adepo is a hair too stoic for his role. It's also hard to buy Russell in a stressed-out role. They are fine, but you do get the sense that neither was the first choice for the role.

My biggest knock against the movie is an unfairly defined one. I found myself way too easily distracted while I watched this. Overlord is the kind of action horror movie that normally has no trouble keeping my attention. So, the fact that I kept finding distractions is a passive indictment. I think the movie is going for a pretty specific taste demographic that I'm just barely not in. I can see how the movie would be a lot of fun for a specific kind of movie fan. It didn't quite win me over though.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend