Director: Adam Wingard
Writer: Simon Barrett
Stars: Adria Arjona, Alex Pereira, Dan Stevens
Synopsis: When a rogue squad of genetically engineered super soldiers break loose in the desert, a badass Army sniper must unleash hell to protect her young daughter.
Adam Wingard sits as an interesting filmmaker to view the roadmap from deep genre roots to the IP machine. He and frequent collaborator and writer Simon Barrett have always had horror running through their veins with sturdy slashers like You’re Next, stylish throwbacks like The Guest, and even small stints as a director with the early years of the VHS series. It wasn’t long, however, before Wingard took a trip to the IP machine with a triple whammy of a Blair Witch remake, a Death Note adaptation, and a delve into the monsterverse with two Godzilla and Kong movies in 2021 and 2024, respectively. All this to say, Onslaught represents the promise of Wingard’s return to his roots as a filmmaker post-IP land. A stripped-down back-to-basics ode to the early days of grindhouse slashers you’d find in your local VHS store in the ‘80s, blending exploitation with loads of atmospheric horror and action, and luckily the film succeeds. Ironically, Onslaught’s biggest asset can also be to its detriment, as the lean and mean moniker it lives up to can tilt a bit too far in the lean category, leading to elements of its commentary surrounding growing government evils and third-act buildup to come up a bit short. Still, if you’re looking for some good old genre pulp, Onslaught will be more than sufficient, and it helps that Adria Arjona is here to anchor it all as the film’s badass heroine.
Arjona plays Celeste, an ex-Army vet still reeling a bit from her traumas as a sniper in the war zone, but finds as much solace as she can as the onsite manager for a trailer park in the desert outskirts of New Mexico. When she isn’t collecting rent, she gets the occasional visit from her ex-husband (Jacob Scipio) threatening to take full custody of their daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy), who is dropped off for a surprise visit for the day. Little does Celeste know that hell is about to be unleashed as mad (and balding) Nazi scientist Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens) has been performing top-secret government experiments in a base to create three ultra supersoldiers led by The Butcher (Alex Pereira), removing any past memories and transforming them into unstoppable killing machines. Of course, as with most dangerous government experiments, things go awry fast once the soldiers escape the base and wreak havoc on the populace, and sure enough, begin heading towards Celeste’s trailer park. With her daughter to protect and robotic killers chasing her down, Celeste must unleash a fury like no other to stop the madness.
Endless inspiration from John Carpenter oozes in and out of Onslaught, from Matthew Pusti’s techno-based score to the visceral meanness that radiated from films like Assault on Precinct 13. What remains most impressive about the film’s genre play, however, is how effortlessly it flips between atmospheric tension and sleek, delightfully bloody action. There’s often a hyper stylization that the film toys with throughout, implementing gritty black-and-white sequences during flashbacks of Celeste’s army past and past endeavors of the super soldiers before they were exploited for government experimentation.
The film is not subtle at all in its theme of government evils, but there exists a well-implemented throughline of our slowly growing fascist government willing to do whatever is necessary in the name of efficiency, even if it means dismantling and exploiting any sense of humanity within us or those who have served the country. The film often satisfies a great itch within the space of a simple horror slasher and relentlessly bloody action, similarly to another 80s classic, The Terminator, building the tension of hiding from the soldiers or seeing them in silence in the background one moment and Celeste sniping the assailants so they can get sawed in half by a chainsaw the next. It’s a difficult task, simultaneously helming hoot-and-holler-worthy dismemberments with horrifically realistic depictions of gun violence side by side with one another, but the film’s greatest strength is its balance of atmospheric thrills and transient public violence with the relentlessly bloody, pulpy genre goods Wingard knows we came for.
The narrative tends to get a bit shakier when the quick efficiency of Onslaught’s genre thrills can leave a few key aspects in the dust, removing its potential to be a great flick. For as much as the film rips as an all-efficient machine within both the kills and thrills, it feels like there’s still a couple of minutes of rip-roaring satisfaction that would’ve made everything hit harder at the end. It’s almost like the film decides to close shop on everything once it realizes it’s just about reaching the 90-minute threshold. While a quickly satisfying 90-minute genre thriller is just as good as any film offering it, it leads certain aspects of its fascist government commentary and delightfully freakish characters, like Drew Starkey’s role as Cyrus, a forever inebriated contractor sent to clean up the government mess, to end up with a bit less screentime than you’d want. The qualms are, however, never enough to stick a wrench in the film’s thrill ride machinery, and the mother-daughter throughline between Celeste and Daisy alongside other kickass vet Josiah (Reginald VelJohnson of ‘80s action fame with Die Hard) are enough to carry the film’s spottier story beats.
Onslaught lives up to its title as both a throwback to the glorious visceral nature of grindhouse flicks and a film that zooms through its plot mechanics so fast that it tends to leave certain aspects of its action a bit lacking to fully satisfy in its endeavors. It’s never a dealbreaker, however, as Onslaught provides the sharp thrills, laughs, and gnarly dismemberments to succeed in its homage to the VHS classics we know and love in both horror and action. With Adria Arjona as the glue holding it all together, Wingard and Barrett’s return to their stylized horror roots rips a more than sufficient amount and gets the job done as slickly exquisite and relentlessly violent genre pulp.
