{"id":755837,"date":"2026-08-31T18:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T18:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/755837\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T18:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T18:18:13","slug":"onslaught-review-adam-wingard-action-film-starring-adria-arjona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/755837\/","title":{"rendered":"Onslaught Review: Adam Wingard Action Film Starring Adria Arjona"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cOnslaught<\/a>\u201d is set, more or less, in the present day, but Adam Wingard\u2019s film feels designed to resemble an obscure \u201980s action flick<\/a> that\u2019s been rediscovered from the dustbins of an old VHS collection. Had the film<\/a> actually been made 40-something years ago, the mute, hulking super soldiers who wander through the desert and into the home of main character Celeste (Adria Arjona<\/a>) with the objective of murdering everything in their path would have probably been created by the Soviet Union, or some other boogeyman threatening good American values. In 2026, they\u2019re the creation of a mad Nazi scientist, but one funded and supported directly by the U.S. military \u2014 a choice that says less about the film\u2019s blunt political incision than it reflects a baseline level of distrust in the government that even pulpy genre plays where Adria Arjona kills a guy with a chainsaw now operate under.<\/p>\n

\"'Cameron<\/a> \"The<\/a> <\/p>\n

A filmmaker who cut his teeth in the independent horror world, Wingard first broke out with 2011\u2019s \u201cYou\u2019re Next\u201d and 2014\u2019s \u201cThe Guest,\u201d a pair of clever thrillers that didn\u2019t necessarily subvert the basic tropes they worked with as much as they twisted their relatively standard premises into new shapes. His successive work has been far more anonymous, going from ill-fated projects like a \u201cBlair Witch\u201d reboot and a Netflix adaptation of the \u201cDeath Note\u201d anime to two \u201cGodzilla vs. Kong\u201d crossover movies<\/a> which were way more fun in theory than they were in practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnslaught\u201d represents something of a return to Wingard\u2019s roots, then, a 90-minute action slasher featuring a screenplay written by frequent collaborator Simon Barrett that shoots straight but knowingly winks towards its inspiration. The film plays heavily as a tribute to the works of John Carpenter<\/a> in all its aesthetic excess, from Matthew Pusti\u2019s discordant electronic score that brings to mind \u201cAssault on Precinct 13\u201d to the way Arjona\u2019s Celeste, a veteran whose left eye gets shot out, begins to vaguely resemble a female Snake Plissken.<\/p>\n

As far as directors to crib from, you can do worse than Carpenter, an incredibly influential figure whose specific brand of grit feels sorely missed in the modern landscape of antiseptic horror. Those vibes are enough to carry \u201cOnslaught\u201d into the realm of \u201cgenerally good time,\u201d even if an ungainly structure and thin politics expose that this is ultimately one of Carpenter\u2019s many acolytes rather than the master himself. <\/p>\n

\"ONSLAUGHT,\u2018Onslaught\u2019Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Absurd as it is to say about a 90-minute film, the biggest problem with \u201cOnslaught\u201d might be the pacing, which circles the drain for almost an hour of set-up before finally getting to the home invasion shoot-out audiences are presumably buying a ticket to see. A largely pointless series of interstitials counts down the hours before the genetically engineered baddies break free from their government compound in the first act, while the film tracks the day of Celeste and all the shadowy government conspiracies happening hours away in the desert she calls home. <\/p>\n

A former Army sniper with a surly attitude making a living as a landlord in a run-down trailer park, Celeste gets some meager bits of backstory through black-and-white flashbacks to her time in the military. But she\u2019s a fundamentally simple character, a mother nursing the wounds from her failed marriage who gets her adorable, precocious daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy) thrust on her by her ex-husband at the worse possible time. That she\u2019s as compelling as she is has less to do with anything in the script and more with how fun Arjona is in this mode, bringing an exhausted, give-no-fucks attitude that\u2019s never less than watchable and making the character\u2019s predictable turn to hardcore mama bear still utterly enjoyable. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s when \u201cOnslaught\u201d strays from her that it ends up on much shakier ground. In parallel, the opening act follows Dr. Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens<\/a>), the Nazi responsible for the super soldier program, as he reactivates it. Stevens, who played the main villain in \u201cThe Guest\u201d and starred in Wingard\u2019s \u201cGodzilla x Kong\u201d sequel, excels at playing wacky genre weirdos, and he gets a solid one in this snarling, mincing fascist with balding grey hair and inhumanly pale skin. But Kammler\u2019s campiness feels wildly out of place in this film\u2019s tonal landscape, as if Marlon Brando in \u201cThe Island of Dr. Moreau\u201d wandered into \u201cThe Thing,\u201d and he\u2019s discarded too quickly to ever amount to much of a compelling antagonist.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not the only perfectly fine actor largely stranded in the film\u2019s mucky sidequests: Rebecca Hall, also a player in Wingard\u2019s \u201cGodzilla\u201d movies, gets what amounts to an extended cameo as Kammler\u2019s cold wife, while Drew Starkey plays a slimy government fixer in a subplot that mostly seems to exist to justify him showing up to the bloodbath\u2019s aftermath. The film could have only benefited from narrowing its scope away from all the government muck, an attempt to flesh out a mythology for its villains that are scarier simply as faceless, mysterious weapons of mass destruction. <\/p>\n

\"ONSLAUGHT,\u2018Onslaught\u2019Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

When \u201cOnslaught\u201d finally cuts out the fluff and gets to the bloody trailer park shoot-out that serves as its main setpiece, the result proves plenty compelling. Wingard and cinematographer Oren Soffer have a knack for a set piece that presents the action in eligible but unexpected ways: an early massacre at a gas station convenience store shifts to the POV of the gun, while a chase between Daisy and one of the soldiers underneath one of the trailers makes good use of the environment for suffocating claustrophobia. The cinematography captures the lush expanse of the desert and bathes the characters in dark blues while never leaving the frame murky, and the use of steadicam and exaggerated zoom-ins plants the film\u2019s feet more firmly in its \u201980s inspirations.<\/p>\n

The action has a satisfying crunch, thanks in part due to Wingard\u2019s delight in dousing his actors in buckets of fake blood. Arjona is maybe a bit too traditionally beautiful to fully scan as a hardened vet and gun nut, but she acquits herself well in the action scenes and can sell a cheesy line like \u201cdon\u2019t mess with mama\u201d on pure charisma alone. While the supporting cast outside of the trailer park proves superfluous, Celeste\u2019s neighbors and ragtag allies, played by Eric Wareheim and Reginald VelJohnson, add a bit of humor and camaraderie that helps keep the film\u2019s tone from ever veering too serious.<\/p>\n

A late-in-the-game twist connects Celeste more directly to the assailants and gestures toward \u201cOnslaught\u201d having something broader to say about the military. Like Stevens\u2019 crazed sergeant turned slasher villain in \u201cThe Guest,\u201d the veterans and soldiers in Wingard\u2019s latest are exploited and experimented on by their government, robbing them of whatever souls and autonomy they once held. The opening credits of the film, featuring newsreel footage of military parades overlaid with glitchy effects and harsh techno music, appear to nod at some equating of the America of today with the authoritarian governments of the past. <\/p>\n

But whatever anti-military ideals \u201cOnslaught\u201d might hold, this is still fundamentally a movie about how guns are rad and one soldier can stand alone and save the day. That\u2019s not to say Wingard\u2019s movie is necessarily politically confused, as much as its commentary takes a decided backseat to its thrills, with sensibilities that are firmly rooted in \u201980s jingoism without fully subverting it. By looking so strictly towards the past, \u201cOnslaught\u201d winds up with not much particularly compelling to say about today.<\/p>\n

Grade: B-<\/p>\n

A24 will release \u201cOnslaught\u201d in theaters on Friday, September 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cOnslaught\u201d is set, more or less, in the present day, but Adam Wingard\u2019s film feels designed to resemble…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[159403,20948,96,2332,2839,159404,129,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-755837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-adam-wingard","tag-adria-arjona","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-movies","tag-onslaught","tag-reviews","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}