‘Resident Evil’ Meets ‘Saving Private Ryan’ Action War Thriller Has Just Hit Streaming

Although war epics and zombie horror movies seem like an unlikely genre pairing, they aren’t incompatible, and one 2018 title proved a delightful exception to the rule. Although it grossed over $41 million against a $38 million production budget, this horror film produced by J.J. Abrams failed to make much of an impact with audiences. Nevertheless, critics raved about it, helping it reach a notable 82% on Rotten Tomatoes — a rare score for a zombie movie.

Directed by Julius Avery (The Pope’s Exorcist), the bizarre 110-minute epic has just found a new streaming home, and it seems like the perfect opportunity for the unconventional war film to seek some redemption. Trust us when we say this one gets very, very gnarly.

‘Overlord’ Is the Weirdest War Movie You’ll Ever See

Overlord takes viewers to the heart of the Allied invasion during D-Day in Nazi-occupied France. A group of paratroopers is on a mission to destroy a radio tower, but their plane is shot down while flying over enemy territory. Only a few survive, but those who do decide to complete the mission while looking for a place to hide.

What they don’t know is that their target sits above a highly secret compound where a Nazi scientist has been running experiments with a special substance that can bring dead soldiers back to life. Private Ed Boyce (Jovan Adepo) will do whatever he can to escape the horde of snarling and angry Nazi zombies. Now you see why we’ve described this one as Saving Private Ryan meets Resident Evil.

On August 1, Overlord began streaming on a new platform. The 2018 film is now part of the Paramount+ library alongside other new additions such as A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Escape From Alcatraz, as well as the full franchise collections From Dusk Till Dawn and The Hangover.

War Horror Is an Actual Subgenre With Plenty of Good Movies

Even though it seems absurd to associate two genres as distant as war and horror, there have been a few filmmakers with enough guts to combine them. Some of them have disastrously failed, but others have created original features that perfectly balance the horrendous nature of war with the absurdity of gory horror. One thing they all share is that they’re not exactly made with the intention of telling a story based on facts, or being historically accurate.

Michael Mann’s The Keep pushed the boundaries, resulting in a wild World War II movie. Although Threads doesn’t depict a real war, it does fictionalize the end of civilization in a groundbreaking nuclear panic story that’s scarier than most horror movies. Frankenstein’s Army blends the mad-scientist concept with WWII elements in a found-footage film that’s extremely underrated. And Jacob’s Ladder is a terrifying genre blend that reveals the horrors of PTSD in a tale about a Vietnam veteran with a shattered mind and the monsters who haunt him.

Can you think of another war horror gem we could be missing? Shoot back in the comment section and we’ll add it to our watchlist.