Director Adam Wingard skipped Godzilla X Kong: Supernova to return to his gorier genre roots with grindhouse-style actioner Onslaught. Set loosely in the world of The Guest, even employing tracks from his The Guest 2 soundtrack, Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett up the ante on the super soldier concept with B-movie flair. Despite its throwback style and heaps of gore, though, Onslaught never fully delivers on its title and central conceit.
Adria Arjona (The Belko Experiment, Morbius) leads as Celeste, a perpetually pissed-off Army vet with PTSD. She lives in a remote desert trailer park full of eclectic neighbors, including an elder military veteran (Die Hard‘s Reginald VelJohnson) and a screw-up cop (Eric Wareheim). Celeste spends her days shooting guns and chasing down rent from tenants, until her ex drops off her daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy) unexpectedly.
Celeste’s bad day gets worse when a trio of super soldiers, genetically enhanced by Dr. Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens), break confinement from their lab just north of the park and begin a relentless murder spree.
Onslaught dedicates much of its first half breezing through setup, arranging all of the pieces on the playing field while employing an actual countdown to the precise moment the “onslaught” will commence. The good news is that Barrett and Wingard unleash a slew of colorful characters to distract. Stevens revels in playing weirdos, and Kammler might be his most peculiar yet, though he’s less present than you’d expect. Similarly, Rebecca Hall embraces villainy as the mad doctor’s dominatrix wife, though far more elusive. Drew Starkey steals scenes as the enigmatic operative tasked with tracking and cleaning up the super soldier experiment-gone-wrong while on MDMA, though Barrett’s script often seems unsure how to fully maximize his mesmeric presence.
All of it moves at a rapid clip, barreling towards that final countdown, as Wingard leans heavily into the grindhouse spirit. That doesn’t just mean John Carpenter-style synth and title cards, or choppy editing and frantic camerawork. It also means a deep uninterest in character development or fully coherent storytelling. Barrett and Wingard fleetingly introduce conspiracy theories and wartime themes, leaning heavily into grayscale flashbacks to flesh out Celeste’s military trauma, only delivering just enough superficial padding to cut straight to the point: the inevitable gory action “onslaught.“
That would be more than fine if Onslaught actually delivered on that promise.
When the action begins in earnest, Wingard delivers a spectacular slaughter that quickly culls the playing field. The trio of unleashed super soldiers display tactical intelligence but operate more like stoic Jason Voorhees-like menaces, eviscerating anything within sight. No one is safe. Once the inspired massacre has culled the fodder, leaving only a handful to make their Assault on Precinct 13-style final stand, the film’s third act loses all momentum.
Worse, the deaths of random supporting players take precedence over the film’s heroes and villains. Onslaught attempts to draw clumsy parallels between Celeste and her attackers, an unnecessary and overly sentimental contrivance that feels at odds with the villains’ slasher tendencies. It’s also the tipping point at which these unstoppable killing machines lose any menace as the final confrontation makes Celeste’s job far too easy. Onslaught ends with a whimper, dangling more interesting ideas it has no interest in fully exploring, sans a sequel.
Onslaught operates on ‘80s-style excess, complete with grizzled grit and gore. It also moves at a rapid clip, never overstaying its lean runtime. That makes for a fun enough time, but the madness peaks far too early, setting up one explosive finale that never arrives. While the chainsaw gets its due in a gun-heavy actioner, Onslaught ultimately misses its target.
Onslaught releases in theaters and IMAX on September 4, 2026.
