Onslaught

Acclaimed indie horror director Adam Wingard followed his breakout hits You’re Next and The Guest with several examples of undistinguished IP exploitation, including the dreary Blair Witch reboot, the English-language Death Note, and two Godzilla vs. Kong movies. With Onslaught, he proves he can make a fully original movie that is utterly idiotic, not to mention half-baked, vile, and insipid.

Wingard and his collaborator Simon Barrett are clearly going for gut-bucket grindhouse here, but even by those particular standards, Onslaught arrives as a particularly loathsome bucket of guts, with subplots that go nowhere, building toward a climax that practically ends before it gets started. Throw in a cavalier attitude toward child endangerment, a tossed-off use of the f-slur, and one of the most misogynist presentations of women’s anatomy to be included in a recent motion picture, and you have the makings of a strong worst-of-the-year contender. No wonder A24 is dumping this thing on Labor Day weekend, when US audiences are generally distracted by back-to-school planning and end-of-season barbecues.

The film opens by cross-cutting between two characters and counting down toward an unspecified event in their future: Celeste (Adria Arjona, Hit Man) is a combat veteran and trailer-park manager who finds herself saddled with young daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy), even though it’s supposed to be dad’s weekend. Meanwhile, former Nazi scientist Hans (Dan Stevens, in a ridiculous bald cap and gray old-age wig that make him look like Gavin McLeod playing Riff-Raff in Rocky Horror) is whisked off to a secret government compound where he’s been genetically turning three homicidal GIs into invulnerable super-soldiers, ruthless killing machines who won’t stop until no one is left standing.

That mission statement turns out to have been ill-advised, as the trio murders Hans and his colleagues and burns down the base, making their way into civilization to commit more slaughter. After a massacre at a truck stop — during which Wingard and cinematographer Oren Soffer (The Creator) switch to first-person shooter POV, so as to reduce a horrific scene of violence to a video game — the super-soldiers set their sights on Celeste’s trailer park. And wouldn’t you know it, one of those soldiers has a shared past with Celeste.

That shared past is one of many factors in Barrett’s screenplay that comes to little fruition, alongside Hans’ dom wife (Rebecca Hall, wasted in a nothing role) and the MDMA-addled government agent (Drew Starkey, Queer) tasked to clean up and cover up this mess, no matter how many innocent civilians he has to kill.

There’s a way to make a bloody shoot-em-up like this entertaining and even enjoyably disreputable, but the overwhelming result of Onslaught is ennui; the movie builds up to big confrontations, and then when they arrive, none of them are particularly thrilling or tense or even outrageously over-the-top. If anyone involved with this fiasco deserves praise, it’s casting director Rebecca Dealy (I Love Boosters) for assembling an eclectic roster of supporting performers that includes Reginald VelJohnson, Eric Wareheim, and Michael Biehn. If only Wingard and Barrett had also been firing on all cylinders.

Director: Adam Wingard
Screenwriters: Simon Barrett; story by Adam Wingard & Simon Barrett
Cast: Adria Arjona, Blake Kennedy, Reginald VelJohnson, Eric Wareheim, Dan Stevens, Michael Biehn
Executive producers: David Kern, Jon Rosenberg, Natalie Sellars, Stuart Manashil, Todd Lundbohm
Producers: Simon Barrett, Andrew Swett, Alexander Black, Jeremy Platt
Director of photography: Oren Soffer
Production design: Tom Hammock
Editing: Josh Schaeffer, Adam Avery
Music: Matthew Pusti
Sound design: Jason W. Jennings, supervising sound editor
Production companies: A24, RPC, Breakaway Civilization
In English
92 minutes