Overlord

This ultra-gory hybrid movie is more fun than a typical war movie and more intense than a typical horror movie. Produced by J.J. Abrams and directed by Julius Avery, Overlord -- which feels something like Inglourious Basterds crossed with Re-Animator -- goes along for the first hour as if it were an ordinary WWII movie, albeit one that's rather noisy and with quite a lot of shaky-cam footage. But it's a good story, with interesting characters, and it works. Then, not unlike From Dusk Till Dawn -- which suddenly morphed from one kind of movie into another -- Overlord goes completely bonkers.

For a while, Avery drops a few curious hints, and then the surprises keep getting bigger and more shocking. Curiously, the director's camerawork improves here, too, roaming the spaces of Chloe's home, with its nifty attic space, and the lower reaches of the church, with its bubbling wells of mysterious ooze and racks of sinister scientific equipment, with new clarity and purpose. Despite a few clichés, the performances are likewise rich, with Adepo (Fences) bringing a strong sense of good into the den of nastiness. As a bonus, the screenplay by Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) ponders the concept of evil in an interesting way, specifically the pure evil of Nazis compared to the violent methods used by the Americans who are trying stop them.