Onslaught

Celeste (Adria Arjona) engages in target practice in Onslaught (Distributed by A24)

Adam Wingard seemed like he was well on his way to becoming a great thriller director after the one-two punch of 2011’s You’re Next and 2014’s The Guest. He then detoured to big studio filmmaking with Godzilla vs. Kong and its sequel. He is now back to his roots twelve years later with Onslaught, a thriller set in the same cinematic universe as The Guest, but with a new story and characters. There is a lean, mean, violent action movie buried in here somewhere, that is like a cross between Aliens and Universal Soldier. However, there is too much fat on the bone for it to be let loose.

Amazingly, in a movie that is only 89 minutes long (not including the end credits) and has a very thin plot, it takes nearly an hour to get through all of the setup. This spends so much time establishing its story and introducing its shallow world that it takes too long to get to the proverbial fireworks factory. There are some quirky characters and the setting is fittingly grimy, yet the screenplay doesn’t do anything with them. Same goes for Adria Arjona, who shows she can be a cool action hero in the few minutes she is given to do so. The last thirty minutes are pretty good. The rest is a real letdown.

Celeste is an ex-soldier with PTSD living in a trailer park in the middle of nowhere. When a trio of super soldiers escape from a nearby military base, she must do whatever she can to protect her young daughter and survive the night.

Wingard tries to disarm his audience with strange music choices, bizarre character behavior and sudden bloody violence. None of it means anything, not even in an entertainingly weird genre subversion kind of way. Most of the cast is dispatched so quickly that it just makes their dramatic introductions confusing and frustrating. The only people who actually matter are Celeste, her daughter, Daisy, and the three faceless killers (we literally never see their faces), who are given brief, completely pointless, backstories. If this were wall-to-wall action, that would be understandable. But it isn’t, leaving a lot of dead space, filled in with hollow quirkiness. When it gets down to business, Onslaught works. Then there’s the other two-thirds of its runtime.

Once the programmed killing machines get to the trailer park and Celeste begins to fight back, there is an intensity and urgency the rest of this sorely lacks. The brutality is swift, with a barebones choreography that makes things merciless. Arjona brings a dry humor to Celeste, almost making her interesting, despite her being an outline of clichés. The villains are dull monsters, so there is little for the audience to sink its teeth into until all the stabbing and chainsaw-ing commences in the final act.

Onslaught has an intriguing trailer, promising wild action as one woman battles against an unstoppable force. That is the good part of the movie. Only Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett know why they decided to waste time with scientists, government agents and Celeste’s ex-husband/rent collecting job. Give us a couple of scenes to set the mood and provide a sense of life, then let’s get to the exciting stuff. That would have been a lot more fun. As it is, it’s an enjoyable half an hour preceded by a bunch of meh.

2¾ out of 5

Cast:

Adria Arjona as Celeste

Blake Kennedy as Daisy

Dan Stevens as Hans Kammler

Reginald VelJohnson as Josiah

Eric Wareheim as Kovacks

Directed by Adam Wingard

Screenplay by Simon Barrett