{"id":566393,"date":"2026-07-24T18:47:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T18:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/566393\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T18:47:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T18:47:14","slug":"adam-wingards-onslaught-in-same-universe-as-the-guest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/566393\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Wingard\u2019s Onslaught \u2018In Same Universe\u2019 As The Guest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since the first trailer dropped a couple of months ago for Adam Wingard\u2019s Onslaught<\/a> \u2014 the first film from the American director since he left Godzilla and Kong to fight<\/a> over their new empire<\/a> \u2014 the debate has been raging in the Empire office: is it a sequel to Wingard\u2019s 2014 blackly comedic action-horror classic, The Guest<\/a>?<\/p>\n

The case for the prosecution: like The Guest, Onslaught was written by Simon Barrett. Like The Guest, it revolves around the notion of government-created, nigh-on unstoppable super soldiers. Like The Guest, Dan Stevens is in it. It\u2019s got to be a sequel, right?<\/p>\n

\"Onslaught\"<\/p>\n

Sadly, the defence rested its case today when Wingard took to Ballroom 20 for a raucous, Kevin Smith-hosted panel promoting the movie, and he brought most of his cast with him, including star Adria Arjona, who plays a former soldier turned single mum who finds herself and her daughter in the crosshairs of said super soldiers: Rebecca Hall, Drew Starkey, and Stevens himself. But that\u2019s not all \u2014 the new trailer for the movie, which will be online in a couple of days, also played in the room, and a blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it shot of Stevens in old age makeup (and displaying a German accent) seems to have blown apart our hypothesis. Then Stevens went and smashed it to bits. \u201cIt is a spiritual sequel,\u201d he said. \u201cThat said, it lives in the same universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

“I want to make a film where, spoiler alert, Dan Stevens licks people\u2019s feet.”<\/p>\n

Now we don\u2019t know what to believe. For Wingard did indeed confirm that he sees this movie as the third and final part of a trilogy that began with You\u2019re Next<\/a> and continued with The Guest, and that this takes place in the same town as The Guest. But Stevens is not playing his all-American psycho here. Instead, he\u2019s playing a foot-licking, possibly Nazi scientist who, along with Hall\u2019s \u201cdominatrix handler\u201d, is responsible for the program that unleashes the super soldiers upon Arjona and her daughter.<\/p>\n

\"Comic-Con<\/p>\n

\u00a9Getty<\/p>\n

So it isn\u2019t a sequel to The Guest. But it also is. Confused? You will be. But you\u2019ll also likely be too busy having a blast with Onslaught to care, for the film looks like a ton of fun, with Wingard talking about his reasons for making an ultra-violent 80s throwback as his pivot away from the MonsterVerse movies that have recently been his bread and butter. \u201cThis was the movie that I was like, \u2018alright, I\u2019ve been making all these big fucking movies for so many years,\u201d he told the audience, \u201cand what do I want to do? I want to make a film where, spoiler alert, Dan Stevens licks people\u2019s feet.\u201d<\/p>\n

That noise you can hear is one Mr. Q Tarantino rushing out to buy tickets. We might join him. Not for the feet, but for the promise of relentless, uncompromising action, colourful characters (Starkey describes his character as a \u2018hired government killer who\u2019s on MDMA\u2019), a John Carpenter-esque score, and Wingard getting final cut for the first time in his career. As a final surprise, the panel dropped a brief clip from the beginning of the movie, featuring Arjona shooting a bunch of pumpkins, while having a PTSD flashback to her days in combat, followed by a cracking title drop.<\/p>\n

Audiences in America will get this in just a few weeks, when it opens on September 4. We\u2019ll have to content ourselves with writing letters to our MP to try to nail down a UK release date. Let the Onslaught onslaught begin.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for more coming soon from San Diego Comic-Con 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the first trailer dropped a couple of months ago for Adam Wingard\u2019s Onslaught \u2014 the first film…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60],"class_list":["post-566393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}