A mash-up of action, horror, satire, and social commentary that pulls no punches
Have you ever considered the similarities between the landmark 1978 slasher Halloween and 1982’s First Blood? In both films, a man of few words arrives in a small town that treats him like the bogeyman, and when circumstances escalate to the point of murder, a specialist who’s highly familiar with the seemingly indestructible killer is brought in to deliver dire warnings to the authorities about the man’s prowess. The primary difference between each film is what these killer characters represent. Michael Myers in Halloween is a fill-in for the unfathomable evil of motiveless murder, while John Rambo is a soldier whose mistreatment during the Vietnam war is representative of all veterans of that period.
Back in 2011, indie filmmaker Adam Wingard made the first film in what would become a thematic trilogy of movies that mixed the themes of both Halloween and First Blood together. That movie, You’re Next, is a home invasion slasher in which the killers are hired mercenaries. The next film in the trilogy, 2014’s The Guest, centered on a single veteran of the war in Afghanistan whose secret military experiment programming leads to him wreaking havoc on a small town. Now Wingard and writer Simon Barrett have delivered the third in this thematic trilogy, Onslaught, and it’s the most brutal and pointed of all three films. It’s basically a siege picture involving an escaped genetically engineered soldier unit led by The Butcher (Alex Pereira), whose programming for engagement against domestic targets leads them to attack a small trailer park community whose landlord, Celeste (Adria Arjona), is a combat veteran herself. Onslaught is a mean mix of action and horror, with a good dollop of satire and social commentary that recalls the unfiltered heyday of 1970s and ‘80s grindhouse pictures.
Adria Arjona leads an ensemble that’s full of surprises
Onslaught is a brutally single-minded movie when it comes to pure plot, and therefore there aren’t any massive twists or anything of sort in the narrative. Where the bulk of the film’s surprises lie is in its ensemble cast, all of whom feel like they’re stretching their abilities here. Adria Arjona is next-level good as Celeste, who is forced to fend off The Butcher’s attack while protecting her daughter, Daisy (Blake Kennedy). Arjona takes what could’ve been a stock “mama bear” action heroine and gives her some gnarly dimension. The actress makes Celeste a deeply flawed person who’s gratingly temperamental and highly suspect in her parenting, yet keeps her understandable enough to be sympathetic. Between this and her recent performances in Hit Man and Splitsville, Arjona proves her versatility.
The example set by Arjona’s lead performance extends to every other actor in the film, all of whom show sides of themselves that make their characters pop in a grand, pulpy fashion. Alex Pereira is the scariest assassin this side of The Terminator. Drew Starkey is beautifully gonzo as Cyrus, a government cover-up agent who’s drug-fueled night off is rudely interrupted by the soldier’s massacre. ‘80s action icons Michael Biehn and Reginald VelJohnson have a ball poking fun at their respective legacies while providing quirks to their characters here. Meanwhile, Adam Wingard repertory company members Dan Stevens and Rebecca Hall take a pair of characters who might’ve come off too cartoonish in lesser hands and make them compellingly truthful while making sure their grindhouse-ish oddity isn’t lost. Wingard’s secret weapon has always been his cast of characters, and Onslaught is a shining example of this.
The example set by Arjona’s lead performance extends to every other actor in the film, all of whom show sides of themselves that make their characters pop in a grand, pulpy fashion.
The film is designed to antagonize
What Onslaught is emphatically not is a mere genre pastiche for aesthetic’s sake. Sure, Adam Wingard does love his synthwave needle drops (and a pulsing original score by composer Matt Pusti to go along with them) as much as he and Simon Barrett love peppering their movies with various references to the genre film classics they admire. Yet he uses these elements to serve theme and tone beyond just celebration, so he isn’t pandering to the geek crowd. Instead, these references and aesthetics only serve to draw more attention to the film’s deeper aims. In other words, some filmmakers just think it’s cool to reference or emulate John Carpenter movies, while Wingard understands that Carpenter was using films like The Thing and They Live to make bold, uncomfortable statements about politics and society.
To be sure, Onslaught is hardly a comprehensive look at the current sociopolitical atmosphere. Yet its evocations and provocations cut surprisingly deep, enough that some moments may be genuinely hard to take. We genre fans have been spoiled over the last few decades, and as such it takes a bit more to shake us up than extreme violence and harsh language (which the film has plenty of, naturally). There’s a cruel streak to the film that isn’t seen too often these days, and the movie’s context doesn’t allow for an escapist sense of removal. The film hews closer to Civil War than, say, Deadpool and Wolverine, making its violence uncomfortable rather than outrageous. Onslaught is a deliberately antagonistic film, and if you’re not on that wavelength, it could anger you. Heck, it might still do so even if you are on the film’s vibe; I was loving it so much that I felt frustrated at it’s too-short 92 minute runtime!
Adam Wingard brings true exploitation flavor back to genre fare
It’d be easy to dismiss Onslaught as just another genre film in a cinematic landscape that is saturated with genre movies, but that would be doing it a disservice. As Adam Wingard’s film demonstrates, there’s much more going on beneath its surface than badass heroines, creepy super soldiers and electronic music. Even elements that may have been merely irreverent in a lesser film have a deeper, more disturbing resonance given the movie’s larger context. At the same time, Onslaught isn’t solely commenting on current events. Like the movie’s abrasive title sequence implies, there’s been a cancer lurking within the military industrial complex and the government’s various applications of such for decades, if not longer.
Having these heavy themes and connotations on its mind makes its use of sleazier elements like violence and nudity more dimensional. These things aren’t in the movie just because they’re edgy and cool, but because, like the classic exploitation filmmakers of yesteryear knew, they’re the sugar coating around the poison pill the movie wants you to swallow. America is a massive country, and it’s all too easy for us to dismiss and overlook problems if they’re far away. Onslaught belongs to a tradition of horror and action movies that bring the war back home. The way it does is thrilling and chilling in equal measure, which is exactly as it should be. Like Michael, Rambo, and now The Butcher, we all need a reminder of what’s waiting outside our doorsteps if we’re not careful.
Onslaught releases in theaters on September 4th, 2026.
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Rating: 9 out of 10
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