Onslaught is the perfect title for Adam Wingard‘s latest movie.
For the past decade, Wingard’s been working with other people’s franchises, playing in the realms of Blair Witch, Death Note, and, of course, Legendary’s MonsterVerse. With his latest film, an action-horror assault set in the same world as You’re Next and The Guest, Wingard re-teamed with longtime collaborator Simon Barrett to create a gnarly, relentless, well, onslaught on the senses.
Set in a desert trailer park, the movie follows Celeste (Adria Arjona), a single mom still nursing wartime trauma from her time in the military, who faces down the fight of her life when a group of super-soldiers developed by a third-generation Nazi scientist (Dan Stevens) happen upon her home, her daughter, and her friends. What follows is an all-out battle for survival, complete with gnarly kills, connections to past Wingard/Barrett productions, and more.
So, how did this movie come together? What did the MonsterVerse teach Wingard about filmmaking? What’s the secret to a good chainsaw kill? Bloody Disgusting sat down with Wingard after a special screening of the film in August to talk about all of that and more.
Bloody Disgusting: In terms of story, how far back does Onslaught go with you and [co-writer Simon Barrett]? How far back are you knocking this idea around?
Adam Wingard: Well, it’s interesting because Simon and I have developed a lot of scripts over the years that we haven’t made yet. There’s been a lot of other potential successors or even potential trilogy toppers that we just haven’t been able to make for whatever reason. This film, actually, it really started in the middle of the production of the last Godzilla film. I’ve been doing franchise IP stuff for the last 10 years, at least. The hardest thing about doing franchise things is you’re playing by somebody else’s rules or preexisting style rules and all that kind of stuff.
Even on top of that, there are so many politics and the compromises that go along with that. Halfway through the last Godzilla movie, I was just sort of like, ‘You know what? I don’t want to do another studio picture just yet,’ even though I had a couple lined up. Face/Off 2 was almost one. My initial thought was, well, I’ll just spend $300,000 of my own money, do it old school, go out, utilize the fact that I know people like Rebecca [Hall] and Dan [Stevens], and maybe tailor a small movie around them. I started kicking this idea around.
I knew I wanted to do a movie about a parent. I started thinking about this idea of more of a paranoid conspiracy thriller that takes place in a trailer park. I kicked that idea around on my own for a little while. Then suddenly, it hit me one day that this idea would work better as an action movie and [it could be] a little bit bigger. I talked to Simon, and he and I started kicking around the idea, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger.
I think what’s cool about that is that the genesis of it really was very much in the exact same vein of how we would have developed movies back in the day. When you’re doing smaller stuff, especially when you’re coming up, you’re designing a film around the resources that you have and that you know that you can pull off or maximize. Because this started off in that sort of way, it was interesting because we were able to expand it in a bigger movie way, but the heart of it still had the same heart that we would have had even back then.
BD: You said you really wanted to tell a story about a parent. What was the attraction to that concept?
AW: When I look at this as a trilogy, especially because You’re Next and The Guest were at a completely different phase of my career, those films have this youthfulness to it. There’s a giddiness of the naivety of what’s to come. Having lived all these experiences in the studio [world], and just being a person, it’s matured me in a way. It’s like I still wanted to bring the same irresponsible B-movie thing. I like to call this an A-plus B movie because that’s how I see it. Deliver on all the things that you want to satisfy for a B movie, but do it with the A polish that I’ve learned over the years.
I’m a parent now. I have an almost four-year-old daughter. That’s the thing that changed. It’s like when I had a kid, it opened up all these things, and I felt unprepared to be a parent in a lot of ways. It unlocked all these new fears. Suddenly, there was my personal story. I think when you’re doing the franchise IP thing, you’re trying to channel your creativity into a box that exists. At a certain point, you can only bring so much of yourself.
I think maybe in some ways for the last 10 years, I didn’t really have another story to tell yet. I think it was really being a parent is what gave me that new story and gave me something to frame all the fun stuff around, but I needed it to be grounded in something real. I have a feeling like the next couple of movies will probably also deal with that in one form or another as that evolves.
BD: You mentioned bringing all the polish from your studio work to this movie. What do you think you learned from doing two Godzilla movies that you can really see on screen in Onslaught?
AW: There’s just a confidence. Once you’ve done the biggest movies like the Godzillas and all that kind of stuff, you’ve touched on all the different facets of filmmaking at that point. You’ve done huge special effects, VFX. You’ve done helicopters. You’ve done explosions. You’ve checked all the boxes. You have this familiarity.
You’ve led massive armies of people all over the world and had to coordinate all that stuff. Ultimately, some of that stuff is the confidence that it builds you, but you have to throw that all out a little bit when you’re going back to a smaller movie because what the difference is really is smaller movies are, you have to be purely just crafty all the time. You have to be able to fly by the seat of your pants. You have to do that in the big movies too, but you have a lot more time to do it. Time management is the hardest thing about moviemaking.
I will say, also, probably one of the best things about going from big movies to small movies or back again is that you are able to meet lots of the most talented people. You’re able to bring them back with you because really at the end of the day, a lot of what that big money is buying is the ability, the access to talent, because people who have a lot of talent, they cost a lot of money. Those same people will be willing to step down with you because they believe in you, because they work with you, and you have a rapport. You’re able to bring these big movie resources down to a smaller one.
BD: With that in mind,what’s it like when you go to Dan Stevens and tell him ‘I’ve got a character for you, and you get to do an accent?’
AW: [Laughs] We designed the character for him. Right out of the gate, we knew we wanted to have this sort of evil third-generation Paperclip Nazi character. We specifically wrote it for Dan because Dan, he’s actually starred in a German movie. He speaks fluent German, and he likes to do it. We just tailored that for him, and it was because he could really.
BD: His character is a big part of the larger military industrial conspiracy at work in the movie. How long has that been a bug in your head? Is that a lifelong [love] of crazy military, industrial conspiracy theories?
AW: Yes. It’s funny. It all started for me … really, you could say in some ways it was started with 9/11 because that was the first time I remember being really exposed to a lot of conspiracies, because I was fascinated just with all the craziest things. That opened my mind to conspiracies as something that I was fascinated by. I don’t necessarily believe everything I hear, but I like to learn about them.
Sometimes they’re just great thought exercises. I think Flat Earth is a great thought exercise. I definitely don’t think the world’s flat. I love watching Flat Earth videos. [laughs] Really, this film, I would say, and the behind-the-scenes of the military thing, it weirdly started with when I saw that movie Downfall with Bruno Ganz as Hitler. That was one of these things where it was like, ‘Oh, these super evil Nazi guys were people at one point, and they didn’t necessarily see themselves as evil. That was a reality that existed.’
I think that started this real interest in the ultimate supervillains as Nazis. Then once you dive into that, you start learning about all the weird programs they did. Then you start learning about how we brought them over here. Then pretty much every conspiracy that’s existed since can be tied back to Operation Paperclip. The moon landing conspiracy, MKUltra, all the big stuff.
Hell, if you believe the 9/11 [conspiracy] stuff, it can all connect back to that moment where we made a pact with the Devil, and we brought these guys over. I’ve been fascinated with that. I wanted to see, if these guys came over then, how has that been developing behind the scenes? How can we play that up in almost like, mad scientist, tropey sort of way?
BD: You talked at the screening about how badass Adria Arjona was from the beginning of this movie, but what did she bring on an emotional level to this movie that you maybe didn’t expect?
AW: I think that she was willing to bring a messiness to the character that I wasn’t expecting an actor to actually embrace. It’s something I wanted, but it’s hard to find somebody who can really do that because most actors aren’t willing to risk being unlikable. There’s just certain things that you just know. There’s just certain misogynistic things where some guys are just not going to like an actress if she yells at a guy. I was like, “Well, this is what this character is.”
Adria immediately was just, that was the first conversation we had, that she really wanted to embrace that, because her character’s a mess. She’s got PTSD. She’s a hermit. She’s not emotionally available for her daughter because she hasn’t dealt with her past trauma, and so her life is on hold. I like that that’s a messy character. I like seeing somebody like that have to deal with things.
BD: I wanted to ask about kills, because you have some fun ones in this movie. How much of that is there in the writing between you and Simon, and how much of it is getting there on the day and figuring it out?
AW: It’s funny because a lot of the kills in this one, because it’s a military-themed slasher, we tried to ground them much more than we would have in the past. What was fun about it is skirting that line, because the second you bring gun violence into a movie, it’s going to turn some people off; it’s going to be disturbing to others and everything else in between. That’s by design. It’s interesting that cutting somebody’s head off and torturing somebody with a knife is somehow less disturbing than just shooting them dead.
I think it’s the relatability. It’s so easy to shoot somebody and that kind of thing. Obviously, in this film, we still have a lot of fun with stuff. There’s a great chainsaw gag in this movie. I guess there are two. It’s interesting because initially, we started setting up– and this is one of those things actually that comes with experience, having done a lot of special effects. When it comes to the gore and blood, I fucking hate CGI stuff. I try to avoid that like the plague. I remember there’s a scene where a character falls on a chainsaw.
Initially, the plan was like: We’ll superimpose this character with a chainsaw, and we’ll put these elements together. I remember we were starting to set it up, and it was taking forever. I just made one of those decisions where I was like, “You know what? If we commit to this right now, we’re going to be here two hours over time. Everybody’s going to be flipping out over that shit. We’re not going to get it, and we’re going to have to dump VFX on this, and it’s going to look like shit. Who gives a fuck?” Then I was like, “Let’s cut early today. We’re going to come in tomorrow, and we’re going to come up with a plan, a different plan.”
Really, the plan was the simplest thing. Like, have somebody sit on a chainsaw and spray blood. Luckily, with those chainsaws, it’s fascinating. The special effects guy [Brandon K. McLaughlin] worked on some of the Texas Chainsaw reboots and remakes and stuff. He had a lot of experience with that. It’s cool because you can use real chainsaws. You just take the blades off, and you can make contact with them, and it doesn’t hurt. It looks like it would still hurt you, but it doesn’t. It was just simple, old-school. If the blood is spraying, it’s gonna be exciting, and you can just at least let that do its magic.
BD: You talked about doing more small movies. This movie leaves open the possibility of more stories in this world. Do you think you’ll ever go back for more?
AW: We have a couple different approaches that we could do. You just have to always be like, “Okay, well, how is this movie going to be received, and who are we going to be as people and filmmakers by the time we get around to doing it?” It’s funny because we put out this vinyl of The Guest 2 a couple years back, which, by the way, we used some of that music in this movie. Actually, major themes we ended up recycling by the same composer, [Matthew Pusti].
It’s funny because that vinyl is actually based on what we would have done as a sequel to The Guest if we had made it within a couple years of that movie happening. I don’t think we would ever make that version. I think, personally, where I would go with all this stuff and what I like about it is that I think we’re creating a little bit more of our View Askewniverse, Jay and Silent Bob thing, where it’s like, I like that those characters can walk into different movies.
I think what we’re doing right now is almost creating a collection of characters. Maybe we’re not finishing their story, but maybe those characters are going to walk into somebody else’s story. We’ll see where it takes us. I think it’s exciting, and I really like the idea of being able to expand these worlds and live in them and see these characters go into different environments.
Sometimes, just even the world that we’ve created, it’s almost enough. It’s like you can feel David’s out there from The Guest. You feel like that Sharni [Vinson]’s character from You’re Next is somewhere out there as well. Maybe eventually, they’ll just end up in the same movie together, and they don’t even have to talk about the last movie they’re in. They’re in a new experience.
BD: Your departure from the MonsterVerse was amicable. Do you ever see yourself going back to that world?
AW: I don’t know. I thought about that. I feel like it’d be way more in the future if I was going to do another monster film. Those specific monster movies, who knows if I find a script or something that I like. Never say never. I felt a lot of ownership on those films. It was really hard to walk away from it because they had a timeframe that they had to hit.
I had to make a Sophie’s Choice kind of thing where it was like, OK, I can spend another couple years making a Monsterverse film, or I can take the plunge and do this movie. It had to be one or the other. I’m really happy this is the decision I made, but it was hard because I felt like I knew exactly where I was going to take that. I felt like the best movie was still ahead of me. But I’ll trade 10 studio pictures for an Onslaught any day, honestly.
