Overlord  ★★★½

THERE are strong Western Australian connections to new Hollywood horror film Overlord.

The director is Julius Avery who comes from the South-West and his previous and first feature film, 2014 crime thriller Son of a Gun, was shot in Perth and the Goldfields.

Now, under the tutelage of producer J.J. Abrams, best known for creating the Lost television series and rebooting the Star Trek film franchise, Avery seriously ups the action and violence quota for Overlord.

Similar to Tarantino’s From Dusk ‘til Dawn, this is a film that settles comfortably into one genre only to take a radical U-turn.

You need to knows this in case you don’t see the trailer. Nobody wants Grandad thinking he’s enjoying a World War II drama only to suddenly find peoples’ faces being eaten by zombies.

Yep, it’s that kind of movie…and it’s right up my alley.

The best thing about Overlord is the fact it succeeds, albeit for a certain length of time only, in both genres.

It’s the eve of D-Day and platoon of American paratroopers has taken to the skies on a mission to destroy a communications base located atop a castle in the centre of a small French town.

Their transport plane comes under severe and sustained fire, resulting in chaos onboard and multiple casualties.

On the ground, only five of the group survive and decide to proceed with the mission despite knowing the odds are now heavily stacked against them.

There are tensions within the disparate group, which is led by the distant and intense demolitions expert Corporal Ford.

The audience’s main sympathies, however, are drawn to Private Boyce, a quiet and considered man who seems at odds with a military career.

The group comes across a local woman, Chloe, who agrees to hide them while they determine how best to infiltrate the castle. She lives with her little brother and sick aunt and it’s here that we get the first hint there is something else in the offing.

When Boyce finds himself inadvertently in the bowels of the castle he discovers horrifying secrets that will further complicate the mission but also galvanise the group into bringing down the evil Nazis.

Apart from a horde of super-human zombies, also in their way is a vicious officer, Wafner, who has been forcing himself upon Chloe and is taken prisoner by the group.

For this moment it’s a non-stop combination of Where Eagles Dare and 28 Days Later where hand-to-hand combat with the marauding undead is punctuated by gunfights and explosions.

As with most of the best horror films, the actors take things very seriously and this helps build considerable tension in a film that could easily have gone off the rails.

Jovan Adepo as Boyce, Wyatt Russell as Ford and Mathilde Ollivier as Chloe are all effective, but most enjoyable is Danish actor Pilou Asbaek as the reprehensible Wafner.

Asbaek is best known as Euron Greyjoy from television’s Game of Thrones, but you can also check him out in the solid thrillers The Absent One (2014) and A Hijacking from 2012.

Overlord is obviously not for everyone, perhaps not for many, but it’s gruesome fun for genre fans.

Avery is now slated to direct two more Hollywood movies, including a remake of Flash Gordon.