Starring Adria Arjona, Dan Stevens, Blake Kennedy, Drew Starkey, Rebecca Hall, Eric Wareheim, Reginald VelJohnson, Michael Biehn
Imagine three Jason Voorhees armed with assault rifles and you have the premise of A24/VVS Films's new horror/siege thriller Onslaught. Director Adam Wingard conducts a symphony of bullets and bloodshed, delivering a joyfully twisted homage to gritty '70s and '80s classics like The Terminator and Assault on Precinct 13.
With a big heart and a short fuse, Celeste (Adria Arjona) is a crash-out machine. After what she's lived through, who can blame her? She's never recovered from the emotional and physical trauma of her time as a military sniper. Now she lives on the fringes of society, managing a trailer park in the middle of the New Mexico desert. She blows off steam by binge-drinking and firing really big guns, interrupted by the occasional visit from her young daughter, Daisy (Blake Kennedy).
On one deadly night, Celeste's trauma resurfaces as she's forced to confront her most primal fears. A security breach inside a top-secret military project in a bunker up the road unleashes three genetically enhanced soldiers hardcoded to kill everything in their path. After exterminating everyone in their facility, the trio take their act on the road, making their way toward Celeste's isolated and defenceless trailer park. When three invulnerable killing machines invade her home turf, Celeste teams up with a ragtag group of locals and utilizes her military training to survive the assault.
Immediately, Onslaught goes off the rails and never looks back. It's no surprise that the filmmaker behind the Godzilla vs. Kong movies treats the concept of restraint as a mild suggestion. Wingard packs the film's entire runtime with nerve-shredding menace, stylish Carpenter-esque atmosphere, and gory acts of violence on par with any slasher flick, not to mention the performances.
Arjona carries the film in full-on Sarah Connor mode. Tough as nails and brimming with rage, she keeps her unprocessed trauma buried beneath her simmering anger. The performance hits the right register for a film about undead super soldiers, but compared to her unhinged co-stars, Arjona's a church mouse. The rest of the cast dial things up to a minimum of 11. Dan Stevens plays Dr. Hans Kammler, a cartoonishly fiendish Nazi mad scientist, while Drew Starkey's molly-dropping government operative could have stepped out of an episode of Twin Peaks.
Wingard's high-concept premise provides a sliver of distance from the all-too-real anxieties the story mines for thrills. The sinister Dr. Kammler is a third-generation descendant of the government's Operation Paperclip program — an actual secret American post-WWII-era initiative that recruited German and Nazi scientists and engineers to the United States to bolster the nation's technical and military dominance.
Kammler's work embodies today's "deep state" anxieties about shadowy government agencies working against the public interest. Wingard's operating with the subtlety of an air raid siren, but the film's sci-fi-horror filter creates enough distance for viewers to confront a fear too horrifying to actually sit with: the U.S. military-industrial complex placing American citizens at risk in the pursuit of profit and power. As absurd as Onslaught may be, the subtext is simply the text.
No one approaches B-movies expecting high art, but those who love genre cinema appreciate the art of the B-movie. These films aren't supposed to check cinema's prestige boxes — they're custom-built to scratch a particular itch. The camp, the caricatures and the flimsy narratives are baked into the genre's DNA. Onslaught delivers a thrill ride, a vibe and an unhinged celebration of its many blood-soaked influences. When it comes to gritty genre fare like Onslaught, the style is the substance, and the imperfections are what make it so fun.
