War is hell, or so the saying goes, but J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot studio is looking to make World War II a bit more horrifying. It just released the first trailer for its upcoming film Overlord. It features American paratroopers jumping into France on D-Day, only to discover a secret installation in which Nazi scientists have created some horrifying monsters to support Hitler’s “Thousand-Year Reich.”
Directed by Julius Avery (Son of a Gun, Kings of LA), it follows a team of paratroopers who are shot down over France as the Allies invade the European continent. While on the ground, they stumble upon a heavily guarded facility, in which Nazi scientists have been experimenting with zombie-like super soldiers. Chaos ensues, flamethrowers are broken out and used, and at least one of the US soldiers appears to be injected with whatever serum the Germans have been playing with. The idea of Nazi zombies isn’t exactly an original one: you can fight against the undead in Call of Duty: World at War and Wolfenstein: The Old Blood, and 2009’s Norwegian horror film Dead Snow was all about them.
Not a Cloverfield film
The film was initially rumored to be the fourth installment of Abrams’ overarching Cloverfield horror franchise, which includes Cloverfield (2008), 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016), and The Cloverfield Paradox (2018). But earlier this year, Abrams noted at CinemaCon that Overlord is a standalone horror film, and that a fourth, proper Cloverfield sequel is in the works. That likely won’t stop people from trying to draw connections between this film and the horror franchise, though.
Overlord opens on November 9th, 2018.