For the longest time, comparing a big-budget Hollywood movie to a video game was the worst kind of insult. It’s saying the product is all sizzle and no steak; lazy filmmaking aimed at the easy marks who can’t resist loud noises and flashing lights. But Overlord kicks off like a video game in the best possible way – there’s a reason the gaming industry earns more revenue than Hollywood. Director Julius Avery infuses Overlord’s over-the-top action beats with a video game’s visceral sense of immersion to create a film with some electrifying set pieces.

Long-time gamers will see an uncanny similarity between Overlord and the video game industry hall of famer, Wolfenstein. Set during WW II, the film follows a group of American soldiers tasked with parachuting into occupied France and taking out a radio transmitter which sits atop a fortified church. Sounds easy enough, right?

These Nazis are total bastards – even by despicable Nazi standards. Below the church sits a lab where doctors transform human test subjects into hellish super soldiers. Corporal Ford (Wyatt Russell) must lead his inexperienced squad into the church even though the Nazis outnumber them by ten to one. Joining him is Boyce (Jovan Adepo), a soldier whose too gentle to kill a mouse, and Chloe (Mathilde Ollivier), a villager with a warrior’s spirit. With only a few hours until D-day, the squad must infiltrate the stronghold, take out the transmitter, and stop the Nazi’s abominations dead(er) in their tracks.

Overlord is an effects-heavy movie loaded with explosions, firefights, and gruesome looking monstrosities. Which makes it frustrating that much of the film is so dark. I don’t mean moody film noir shadows and creepy lighting. I’m talking inscrutably dark, and so poorly lit that scenes become hard to track. When the soldiers move through dark spaces (which is often), it’s almost impossible to see what’s happening. It doesn’t help that most of the film takes place at night and in a dank Nazi dungeon-lab.

When you can make out what’s going on the film looks great. The opening moments, when soldiers fly over occupied France remains the movie’s high-point. The sequence is as hair-raising as the “storming the beach” scene in Saving Private Ryan, though, it lacks its predecessor’s artistry. As the American forces soar over France, gunfire tears through their planes (and soldiers) like knives through paper bags. Viewers feel every bone-rattling explosion as the air force takes hits and spiral down to earth. The sequence is as thrilling and visually impressive as anything you’ll find in a 2018 blockbuster, making it all the more troubling when the scene ends, and the film slows down for way too long.

You would think a movie about soldiers fighting super-Nazis would be a lot more fun. Overlord doesn’t have time for tongue-in-cheque hijinks. It takes itself (Walking)dead serious, with little humour coming from the characters or heightened circumstances. Only Tibbet (John Magaro), the group’s blowhard, dares to break the tension. And he is less a joker than a miserable prick. Not every zombie film needs to be Shaun of the Dead, but there’s a real crowd-pleaser buried beneath Overlord’s layers of Sturm and Drang.

With his father’s good looks and mother’s charisma, Wyatt Russell’s star is on the rise. Don’t be shocked when he’s headlining Marvel movies five years from now. In Overlord, he’s mostly a cipher; the intense commanding officer hellbent on completing his mission. There isn’t anything else to Ford, whose as by-the-numbers as a flesh-eating zombie. Russell brings a fierce intensity to the role, and I buy him as a take-charge alpha male, but not as anything approaching a relatable human being. And certainly not as a compelling hero. I place this on Billy Ray and Mark L. Smith’s no-nonsense script and not on the actors who do the best with what they’re given.

Boyce is the moviegoers’ point-of-view character. He’s the kid too good to exist in his mad, mad world. He’s in over his head and spends most of the film looking like a deer in the headlights. The scariest monsters are the ones we don’t see. And the worst scares are the ones that we anticipate. When the action gets heavy, the camera lingers on Boyce’s face and those big sympathetic eyes of his. Scaring viewers with the fear written on Boyce’s face is a trick right out of Spielberg’s playbook. Using a character as a mirror that projects our own fears back at us intensifies the tension and anxiety. Adepo sells Boyce’s transformation from meek young man to action hero. He’s not quippy, a skilled fighter, or especially clever, but Boyce gets the plot from A to B.

Despite Overlord’s rote genre movie rhythms and revelry of violence, the film packs a valuable message. It calls out the moral perils of fighting fire with fire. Vengeance is intoxicating but all-consuming, and Overlord highlights the dangers of resorting to our enemies’ lows. This can be conducting genetic experiments of enemy soldiers or retweeting fake news about the political candidates we despise.

But this film’s most interested in unleashing a deluge of visual and visceral pleasures. With its frenetic action, dire tone, and grisly supernatural mayhem, Overlord stands out from its box office competitors. And with its glossy production values and killer logline, this movie practically sells itself. Overlord lacks any sense of irony and takes itself far too seriously – imagine someone telling you the wildest story you’ve ever heard with a deadpan delivery, and you’ll get the picture. While Overlord does make for an entertaining night at the movies, it lacks the spirit and personality to lift it into pop culture’s top tier. It’s good enough to get noticed but not good enough to leave a lasting impression, doomed to zombie-march through Netflix queues from now until forever.