Wingard Returns to his Indie Roots with his latest
It’s been kind of surreal watching Adam Wingard’s career unfold over the last decade as a fan, especially in the wake of You’re Next. That film felt like the moment where he was going to become one of the defining genre directors of his generation – and then, somehow, the road to getting the studio recognition he deserved turned out to be a much stranger one. Even as he’s bounced between indie genre oddities and increasingly massive studio productions, Wingard’s smaller films have consistently retained that perfect mix of nostalgic genre worship, scrappy filmmaking energy, and a genuinely quirky sense of humor. It just took a few swings before Hollywood finally figured out what to do with him.
And while his MonsterVerse films were ultimately the big studio breakthrough I’d been rooting for, I will die on that hill for Blair Witch and Death Note any damn day.
I’m not going to lie, I’m a little bummed he’s left the MonsterVerse. But if there’s a silver lining, it’s that Wingard is returning to the kind of gloriously weird genre filmmaking that made me a fan in the first place. Onslaught feels like a return to those roots, serving as a spiritual sequel to his neon-soaked super-soldier fever dream The Guest, only this time Wingard is taking that basic DNA and dragging it straight into slasher territory. And honestly, if anyone can turn a Guest sequel into a slasher, it’s Adam fuckin’ Wingard.
The film follows ex-special forces sniper Celeste (Adria Arjona), who now works as the caretaker of a scrappy remote trailer park in the middle of the desert, populated by a salt-of-the-earth collection of veterans and a cop. Unfortunately for them, the park also happens to be a convenient stopover for a trio of genetically enhanced – escaped super-soldiers with wonderfully ominous codenames like The Butcher, The Crybaby, and The Cockroach.
Dan Stevens returns as Hans Kammler, a third-generation Project Paperclip scientist—essentially a Nazi scientist whose family business is apparently finding increasingly horrifying ways to weaponize human beings. Kammler’s latest creation is a shockingly relevant, conscience-free squad of killers designed specifically for domestic matters: soldiers built to turn their weapons on their own people, on their own soil, without hesitation or remorse. And as if creating an army of human weapons with absolutely no moral compass weren’t terrifying enough, he’s also made them nearly immortal, giving them super strength and the kind of stubborn refusal to die that makes them exceptionally difficult to stop.
Naturally, all of this goes down on the very night Celeste’s adorably OCD daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy) is staying with her while her ex-husband is out of town. And whatever else Celeste may be, she’s not about to let a trio of superhuman killing machines anywhere near her kid.
The film trades some of the neon-soaked aesthetic of The Guest for something much more steeped in the cinematic language of John Carpenter. The second that font hit the screen, I knew exactly where we were heading. Add in the heavy bass-driven score and the The Fog-esque glowing eyes of the super-soldier squad, and the Carpenter homage is anything but subtle. But this never feels like Wingard simply cosplaying as Carpenter. He takes that late-night-cable-movie premise and filters it through his own sensibilities, turning the trio into something like Jason, Leatherface, and Michael Myers reimagined as military-grade killing machines. The result is a movie that feels grimy, nasty, and gloriously excessive—gnarly, gory, relentlessly violent in all the right ways, paired with the requisite skinamax nudity.
A lot of that is also thanks to longtime collaborator Simon Barrett, who returns to script duty and delivers exactly the kind of lean, mean, genre ride I’d expect from the Wingard-Barrett team. The script knows exactly what kind of movie it is, leaning into its clichés just far enough to have fun with them without ever becoming too self-aware for its own good. There’s a knowing wink here and there, but it never feels like the movie is standing outside itself, elbowing you in the ribs. In that respect, it reminded me of Planet Terror, another film that understood the assignment perfectly: embrace the tropes, crank everything up to eleven, and trust the audience to enjoy the ride.
The characters aren’t exactly overflowing with psychological complexity, but Onslaught doesn’t need them to be. In a brisk 90 minutes, Barrett gives everyone just enough personality, history, and oddball charm to make them memorable – and, more importantly, makes you actually give a damn about what happens to them once the killing starts. That’s no small feat in a movie where the primary character development often involves figuring out increasingly creative ways to kill or be killed.
As a kid who grew up in the ’80s watching whatever HBO or Cinemax decided to serve up in the wee hours, Onslaught scratches an itch that only this kind of movie can. It feels like one of those gloriously trashy late-night discoveries you’d stumble across, having absolutely no idea what you were watching but knowing you sure as hell weren’t changing the channel. Wingard and Barrett understand that particular magic and deliver it with plenty of blood, practical carnage, nudity and just enough weirdness and conspiracies to keep you guessing. Onslaught is a bonafide fucking blast from start to finish—a movie made to be discovered at midnight and immediately texted to your friends with similar discerning taste with a simple: “You have to fucking see this.”
