THE STORY – When a rogue squad of genetically engineered super soldiers breaks loose in the desert, a badass Army sniper must unleash hell to protect her young daughter.
THE CAST – Adria Arjona, Dan Stevens, Eric Wareheim, Reginald VelJohnson, Michael Biehn, Alex Pereira, Drew Starkey & Rebecca Hall
THE TEAM – Adam Wingard (Director) & Simon Barrett (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 92 Minutes
“Onslaught” may be one of the gnarliest experiences anyone will endure in a theater this year. The visceral reaction fresh out of the film naturally starts with the most surface-level sentiment, as audiences will spend most of the film’s runtime watching a battle-hardened Adria Arjona and others doused in copious amounts of blood. Yet “Onslaught” also aims to strike a chord beyond the gore-intensive violence that piques audiences’ curiosity, seeking to find the connection behind the satisfaction we derive from this brand of cinematic carnage and its ties to the sinister constitution of a war-obsessive country like the United States. It’s a slippery slope for filmmaker Adam Wingard, who has never had an issue with pushing audiences to their limits, or at least used to. “Onslaught”, which plays as a spiritual successor to “The Guest,” feels like a nice return to form for Wingard, who’s been more interested in roaming around the world of Kaijus the past few years with the Godzilla-Kong crossover features. Any concerns that he may have lost his edge should be appeased with Wingard’s latest outing, yet even by the time the credits roll, you can’t help but feel that, despite being a mostly satisfying affair, it doesn’t fully hit the spot.
Wingard certainly tees up audiences with a flashbang of an opening montage hammering iconography synonymous with American culture and white nationalist movements, mainly the Nazi Party. Guns, swastikas, and plenty of historical ties between these two destructive ingredients ultimately pour into a blender that leads us to witness Dan Stevens in all of his freakishly transformative glory. Stevens’ Dr. Hans Kammler, a leather-licking German scientist with a “mysterious” lineage, is on the verge of his greatest production: a trio of super soldiers constructed from some of modern military’s most barbaric and tragic warriors. While this secretive experimental contract looks to be ripe for exploration, things go beautifully awry, leading these Jason-esque killing machines down the path of Arjona’s Celeste.
Arjona, who has slowly been rising through the ranks of Hollywood with one solid turn after another, gets the chance to step up in her first leading role. Celeste feels like a character primed for a performer like Arjona to relish all the B-movie hallmarks that give her enough material to make her mark. Celeste, a former army sniper, now wallows in isolation in the dust bowl of a trailer park that is Windy Oaks. She’s relegated herself to a semi-isolated lifestyle, spending her time either at target practice or dealing with the issues of the trailer park’s tenants in her role as a live-in super. Arjona brings a hardened demeanor to the character, which clashes with her young daughter Daisy’s ever-developing nature during a contentious time between Celeste and the father of her child. Celeste is struggling as a mother and just trying to stay in Daisy’s life, but now that these big bad super soldiers have come her way, the only thing that matters is keeping her alive.
Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett, despite their conflicting messages, understand that in the grindhouse genre, violence is fundamentally the only way to solve the problem. Audiences witness both the clap-worthy display of havoc that feels satisfactory while also sitting through an emotional whiplash due to some of the most unsettling depictions of gun violence in a film in recent memory that taps into a more realistic horror aligned with what we witness daily in this country. Wingard teeters on the provocative but never fully pulls the trigger, letting moments like an on-screen public massacre feel fleeting, as if it is merely a button to be pressed that aligns with the hardcore aesthetic he’s trying to create. This is only bolstered by the inspired kills and the depictions of sexual deviancy that are on brand with films of this pedigree.
Barrett’s screenplay is simplistic but effective, especially when it’s centered around the mother-daughter story that is the heart of “Onslaught.” Even if the bare minimum is us witnessing a cliched dynamic of a mother out of sync with a child that needs her to step up, it’s plenty of leeway to get audiences to wanna root for mamma bear to destroy anything in her path. Amid all the lunacy, the structure of Barrett’s work leaves many of the eccentric elements feeling occasionally isolated from the main narrative. The best example of this is Drew Starkey’s Cyrus, a perverted professional cleaner hired by the federal government to clean up any remnants of Dr. Kammler’s disaster. Starkey, with those frightening beach-blond dyed eyebrows, subtly steals the show as his character stumbles around laced on MDMA, bringing to life some of the film’s more visually delirious moments. It’s a blast to see Starkey loosen up with a character mainly present to follow the trail of destruction leading to Celeste. Still, it feels more like an afterthought, given how segmented it is compared to the story’s central conflict.
Wingard at least uses these hammed-up and tortured personas that populate “Onslaught” to create a nightmarish look. Oren Soffer’s cinematography bounces around various styles, whether it’s the striking black-and-white photography in Celeste’s wartime flashbacks or the acidic flair injected by the super soldiers or Cyrus navigating a workplace acid trip. Wingard’s action, while not the most dazzlingly constructed, is always entertaining to witness. The scares aren’t equally impressive, but at least Josh Schaeffer and Adam Avery’s editing does its best to inject the right energy into some of the film’s most intense moments.
The added inclusion of ’80s stars like Reginald VelJohnson and Michael Biehn also strengthens the pastiche Wingard is striving for. “Onslaught” succeeds in most of what it tries to tackle, even if, at the end of the day, its core is a bit too familiar for a film trying to break the mold. At the very least, it delivers on what it promises: a gun-ho Arjona kicking ass, ripping these unusual vehicles of death to shreds. Seriously, what more could you really want?
