Ghoulishly Violent Onslaught a Wingard/Barrett Return to Grindhouse Basics
With events set to a suitably blistering electronic score from composer Matthew Pusti (A Good Woman is Hard to Find) that calls to mind early Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape from New York-era John Carpenter, the new horror-action hybrid Onslaught is a return to grindhouse basics for director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett. Made in the same vein as the pair’s You’re Next and The Guest, this low-budget barnburner is an adrenaline-filled symphony of bullets, chainsaws, and bloodshed that’s about as far removed from the likes of Godzilla vs. Kong or Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire as the duo could possibly get.
There’s not a ton of plot, and that’s to be expected. Celeste (Adria Arjona) is a former elite Army sniper with PTSD, currently managing a secluded, rundown trailer park in the middle of the New Mexico nowhere. While watching her daughter, Daisy (Blake Kennedy), for the weekend (her ex-husband was called out of town), the park comes under assault from a trio of unstoppable super soldiers intent on killing everyone they encounter. Celeste will do anything to protect her child, and that means that the psychologically scarred veteran must return to her former lethal ways and fight to put all three inhuman monsters down for the count, no matter what the personal cost might be.
The soldiers are created in a secret lab by a deranged Nazi scientist now working for a secretive paramilitary and weapons company, and he uses the dead bodies of slain soldiers as his guinea pigs. It’s very Universal Soldier, but it’s clear neither Wingard nor Barrett are at all interested in going down some wannabe Jean-Claude Van Damme versus Dolph Lundgren path. They throw that idea out with the bath water right from the jump.
Instead, this is full-blown Hammer horror with a malevolent Frankenstein spin. These three behemoths are monsters, created with twinkle-eyed gonzo gusto by a mad Dan Stevens, his Dr. Hans Kammler sporting a sinister glass eye and wearing a magnificently grotesque bald cap with a platinum blonde bob of a partial wig. He looks something like a Rylan — primarily the childishly demanding villain Xur — from The Last Starfighter, and I can’t help but think the similarity has to be intentional. It’s a magnificently deranged character design.
As for the creatures, that’s exactly what they are. All three are hulking behemoths that are something straight out of a dystopian fascist nightmare. It takes the idea of nameless, faceless officers (eerily reminiscent of ICE, which, again, has to be deliberate) seemingly allowed to take the “law” into their own hands in any way they would like to its absolute zenith. At one point they clinically maraud through a secluded truck stop, slicing and dicing their way through middle- and low-income nobodies with grisly, terrifying precision.
It all builds to the climactic showdown at Celeste’s trailer park. She’s aided by two others, chain-smoking Vietnam vet Josiah (an engagingly rambunctious Reginald VelJohnson) and alcoholic off-duty police officer Kovacks (Eric Wareheim). They’re out-muscled and out-gunned, but they are also shockingly resilient when put face-to-face with what is nothing less than a ghastly trifecta of mayhem and murder. Along with Daisy, they combine to be the emotional center of what is otherwise a straightforward splatter and dismemberment exploitation extravaganza.
Good thing, too, because if Wingard and Barrett are lacking on any front here, it’s in regard to their world-building and how they craft their supporting characters. While every film could benefit from Stevens going for broke with cartoonish, unhinged bravado, this story doesn’t utilize him all that well, if I’m being honest. Same with Rebecca Hall as his domineering wife, Michael Biehn as a defense contractor eager to see Dr. Kammler’s experiments fail, and Drew Starkey as a BDSM-loving operative called in to clean things up when the super soldiers go haywire. Even though they throw themselves into this madness with requisite abandon, they don’t have a lot to do, and as such sadly do not make a lasting impression.
This does make Onslaught something of a step down from You’re Next and The Guest. It’s not as involving from a character and emotional standpoint, and I do wonder if I might have enjoyed myself more watching this one if these two previous endeavors did not already exist. They’re basically freewheeling B-movie perfection, filled with memorable moments and colorful characters galore. But they also have authentic, lived-in world-building as well, making all the deranged carnage that much more satisfying. This film does not have the same.
But that’s a what-if question for another day. By the time the trio of demonic baddies ends up at the trailer park and Celeste — Arjona is outstanding — gears up with whatever weapons she can get her hands on to fight them off with, I was more than happy to watch Wingard get down in the mud and craft abhorrent sequences of action-heavy cruelty. The director has a flair for this sort of thing, and none of the confrontations between mother and monster disappoint.
It all builds to a final showdown that rivals anything found in either of the director’s Godzilla x Kong installments. Once Arjona and Brazilian mixed martial artist and UFC champion Alex Pereira (he’s the leader of the super soldiers, codename “The Butcher”) are standing across the screen from one another, it’s clear all bets are off and that Wingard is about to unleash all sorts of abhorrently violent mayhem. This moment is well worth the wait, and is what ultimately makes watching Onslaught equal to the price of a matinee ticket.
Film Rating: 3 (out of 4)
