‘Onslaught’ review: Half-baked bloodshed

Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett reunite for Onslaught, a mix of action schlock and B-movie gore that never quite gels.

Action and horror don’t really go together, which is kinda odd when you think about it. Some fight scenes or shootouts in action movies can be horrific if given the right framing or context. Meanwhile, the scariest moments in some horror movies involve brief bursts of action. So why aren’t there more example of an action-horror movie? Why haven’t we seen Arnold Schwarzenegger try to punch out a slasher villain? Or how come no one’s tried to kill Michael Myers with a flying axe kick?

While there are a few examples (Aliens and Predator most famously), one reason why we don’t see it often is that one genre cancels the other out. If you want your movie monster to be truly threatening, you can’t take it down with just a barrage of bullets. Conversely, your action hero would look pretty ridiculous trying to take down a ghost or a demon (just ask Arnold). That’s not to say it’s impossible to combine action with horror into a cocktail of high-tension bloodshed. You just need to put a little effort into it. Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, the director-writer combo behind You’re Next and The Guest, needed to put a whole lot more into Onslaught.

The setup is a good start, though. A secret military installation in the desert is housing a former Nazi scientist (Dan Stevens) with the goal of creating obedient, merciless, indestructible super soldiers. The doctor meets that goal a little too well, as his three pet projects go rogue and escape the facility to search and destroy without end. That leads the trio to a sparse trailer park run by Celeste (Adria Arjona), who is trying to establish a closer bond with her young daughter. Celeste also happens to be an ex Army sniper with plenty of ammo, which means she’s the only one who can stop the soldiers’ gruesome attack.

Bumps in the night.

Photo Credit: Richard Foreman/A24

The poster for Onslaught is a striking one: a masked soldier looking like death itself, obscured by laundry drying outside in the daylight. That design could be seen as a reference to a scene in The Guest where the mysterious David (played by Stevens) is also briefly obscured by drying laundry before revealing his true skills as a cold-blooded killer. That design is also a lie, as all of the action in Onslaught takes place in the dead of night. This is not the only thing Onslaught is lying about; though advertising itself as a badass survival action flick, it’s actually closer to a slasher film. Think Halloween if it was wearing the clothes of Assault on Precinct 13.

Wingard and Barrett made their breakthrough in horror, so it makes sense that the best parts of Onslaught are when it’s a horror movie. Wingard presents the trio of soldiers like they’re Jason Voorhees on steroids, ominously posing in windy darkness before barreling towards the innocent with no remorse. Cinematographer Oren Soffer (The Creator) does a great job keeping the killers in the darkness before popping in harsh flashes from gunfire and actual fire to make them look more menacing. It’s also a devilishly clever idea to reframe the intensity of spec-ops military combat as the act of slasher villains. Sadly, that’s where the cleverness of Barrett and Wingard’s script ends.

Onslaught never digs deeper than the flashes of satirizing the American concept of “the perfect soldier” coming from Nazi science. It has the bluntness of an 80s B-movie that a better writer would’ve improved upon, instead of coming off like one of the fake trailers from Grindhouse or a spin-off of The Boys. That stupidity could be excused if the action delivered, but Onslaught also doesn’t capitalize on that opportunity. Wingard doesn’t come up with any fun or clever ways for Celeste to take down the bad guys, instead having her run around screaming with occasional shots from her sniper rifle. When we get to climax and Celeste goes full Ash from Evil Dead, the carnage doesn’t feel earned and it makes you wonder where this energy was in the last 92 minutes. The attempts to be a horror movie block out the chances for the action movie to rise.

Ready to fire.

Photo Credit: Richard Foreman/A24

It’s a real shame because Arjona is clearly ready to be an action hero. She brings steely-eyed intensity to her performance and believably wears Celeste’s tragic military backstory. For playing what is essentially Rambo meets Ripley from Aliens, Arjona makes it her own as she jumps between being a frightened mother protecting her daughter and a wounded ass-kicker ready to take on the world. It makes you wish you could see her setting up intricate traps for the bad guys to get squashed in or get a cool gun-fu fight scene à la John Wick. Onslaught may fail its lead action hero, but at least she came dressed for the part.

None of the other actors are at fault either. The great Reginald VelJohnson is a pleasant surprise as a chain smoking Vietnam vet popping off shotgun rounds and wise words. Eric Wareheim is fun comic relief as a drunk cop too dorky to step up and be a hero when it counts. Even Michael Biehn from Aliens stops by as a snide military official cracking wise at the concept of the lab rate soldiers. He also has fun trading barbs with Stevens who, even in a minor role, stands out for committing to the bit of being a creepy mad scientist. It takes a certain kind of dedication to the craft of acting to lick someone’s shoes in the first scene you’re in.

The bottom line.

Movies with wasted potential are more frustrating than just bad movies. Onslaught is not a bad movie per se, but it’s still frustrating in how it misses so many opportunities to be fun B-movie trash. It looks great, has slick editing, and plenty of carnage for the sickos at the cinema. The problem is it spends so much time jumping between two genres that it never really finds its own momentum to build upon. It never gets creepy enough to be a fully-formed slasher, nor does it have enough exciting set pieces to be an engaging action movie. What you get is a film as vacant and flimsy as the trailer park it takes place in. For all the gunfire that happens in this, it’s a wonder why the movie never pulls the trigger on its own concept.

Onslaught is now playing in theaters everywhere. Watch the trailer below.

Images courtesy of Richard Foreman/A24.

Jon Winkler