Overlord is gory by every standard. The new horror movie is J.J. Abrams and his company Bad Robot’s first R-rated outing, and the drama — a group of American soldiers shoot, burn, and slash their way through a zombie-infested Nazi base during World War II — takes full advantage. If the violence seems particularly affecting, it’s because as much of it as possible was done with practical effects. [Ed. note: this post contains spoilers for Overlord] “That visceral, tactile quality is what I think is so gut-wrenching and scary, and you can’t get that with CG,” director Julius Avery tells Polygon. The film’s poster image, for instance, of Pilou Asbæk with half of his face blown off, wasn’t achieved through putting tracking dots on the actor’s face: Asbæk spent five hours every day getting prosthetics applied. The movie contains worse horrors than that, including a gruesome scene in which a soldier snaps his neck so quickly and so far back that his bones protrude like pennants from his skin. According to Avery, they pulled the scene off through a combination of “old-school puppetry and animatronics.” The only digital alteration was to clean up the shot. “You can’t put a green sock on someone’s face and expect them to know what the hell they look like,” Avery says. “And then the actors, also, are acting opposite a guy with tracking marks on his face or a green sock. But if you can make it real, it’s best. I think that’s what… [Read full story]
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