ONSLAUGHT. The trailer for A24’s Onslaught had plenty of flashing signs indicating “slasher movie ahead.” And yet, the plot, as much as a splatter-fest requires one, specifies a former Army sharpshooter defending her daughter when they stumble upon genetically rigged killing machines. How could I keep from getting geared up for a woman-on-a-mission/mom-against-the-world action movie, particularly one starring the excellent Adria Arjona? Onslaught, being directed by Adam Wingard, was even more encouraging given the gutsy and gory surprise of You’re Next (2011). True, the promos featured more arterial spray than artillery, but even that could be a tension-filled good time at the movies with all these elements.
However, the underused talents of the cast, plot elements that go nowhere and ultimately empty villains add up to a hollow finished product. We get the shape of a fun action-horror — unkillable foes, barren landscape, creepy scientists and punchy side characters — but only the usual superficial treatments without the edgier interrogation and genre expansion the studio has led us to expect from it.
We open on the rocky desert, where Celeste (Arjona) is shooting jack ’o lanterns with a stack of weapons, using the prongs of a stoneless wedding ring to pinch herself into focus and out of PTSD-driven fugue states as needed. She’s an ornery hermit and a divorced military veteran, cleaning her stockpile of guns (legal and otherwise) and managing the Windy Oasis trailer park, banging generators and collecting late rent money from the misfit tenants like wily fellow veteran Josiah (Reginald VelJohnson). Surprised with a visit from her young daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy), she shifts into awkward mother mode.
Elsewhere in the desert, other, odder domestic dramas play out as Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens, convincingly transformed) — a balding, albino remnant of Operation Paperclip, the post World War II program through which the U.S. government brought Nazi scientists into the country, equally devoted to his steely wife Hanna Kammler’s (Rebecca Hall) feet and his experiments creating super-soldiers — heads for work. By helicopter, blindfolded, as you do. At his super-secret desert lab, which happens to be a tumbleweed’s roll from the trailer park, his demonstration of said super-soldiers — hulking war criminals and a seemingly unkillable man, all given night vision, bulletproof bodies and total control over their cardiovascular systems — goes awry. Well, awry in the sense that the trio of revenant killers are on the loose, mowing down whomever they encounter, though civilian casualties seem less of a concern to Kammler than the leaking of their existence.
And so the high-production sex club scene government hitman Cyrus (Drew Starkey) is enjoying, along with a heavy dose of MDMA, must be interrupted for him to track down and deal with the mess. The bleach-browed pro (big day for platinum kinksters) is nonplussed by the whole thing as he follows the bloody trail, though that could be the lingering ecstasy. After nightfall, the super-soldiers finally make their way to the trailer park and make their assault, met by Celeste and Josiah.
Does that feel like a long way to go before we get to the showdown? It is. There’s action as the super-soldiers take out regular men during the demonstration, but despite the blood, it’s quick, cold and not terrifically engaging. There’s no question of the outcome and nobody to root for in earnest. The tension picks up at the Windy Oasis, and there are some genuine jumps (I may have made a respectable squeak) as the killers tear through trailer walls and pop through windows unexpectedly. Once in escape mode — trying to get to a car, trying to cross between buildings — the usual problems create the usual drama, and there are classic moments of horror humor and one-liners.
But is there much point to creating the super-soldier plot if they’re just going to strike a backlit pose like every other masked killer gang, equipped with the same gun, cleaver and chainsaw? Granted, the military-style assault on a store filled with unarmed civilians is joyless and grim — more stomach-turning in its reality than escapist, really, in our present day. But surely there’s some more creative option.
Wingard’s You’re Next (2011), pitting an unexpectedly prepared woman against faceless assailants, is relentlessly paced and inventive, with an interesting and resilient character at its center. Given that film, it’s hard to accept this is all he’s got to offer in Onslaught. Just like Celeste’s cache of weapons we never get to, there’s more to the mother and daughter’s relationship that we never get into, and there’s more to Celeste herself. Seeing Arjona’s performance as a wounded revolutionary in Andor (2022), it’s easy to imagine how much more she could have done given more space in the role of Celeste.
And why make Celeste a sharpshooter if you’re not going to have her do that much shooting or give her access to all the guns she’s been hoarding? Why build up the freaky hitman investigator if he doesn’t do anything a contract killer intern couldn’t cover? For that matter, why cast MMA fighter Alex Pereira as one of the super-soldiers if you’re not going to give him any standout fight choreography? Onslaught isn’t without its moments, but it could have been worth all the cleanup. R. 92M. BROADWAY.
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the managing editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 106 or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky and Instagram @JFumikoCahill.
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This article appears in Condors of the North Coast.
