‘Onslaught’ Review: Adria Arjona and Dan Stevens Star in Adam Wingard’s Fun but Scattered Military Slasher

A 12-hour clock counts down to an inevitable massacre in “Onslaught,” the kind of elevated, razor-wire genre romp that director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett used to make before studio outings like “Godzilla vs. Kong.” It isn’t the most polished of the duo’s output, and often feels in need of just another draft to tighten its nuts and bolts. But despite its occasional failings, this military-infused slasher thriller is their most aesthetically accomplished work, and a fun bookend to a jam-packed movie summer, before the transition to spooky season in the fall.

A trailer park for U.S. army veterans plays host to Adria Arjona’s paranoid, gun-toting Celeste, a former sniper and the compound’s manager. Her continued target practice is plagued by black-and-white memories of war, but she’s soon interrupted when her well-to-do ex-husband shows up out of the blue to drop off their conscientious daughter Daisy (an adorable Blake Kennedy). As Celeste tries to keep the young tyke entertained, events at a covert military base nearby threaten her hard-earned domestic normality.

These strange happenings take the form of a markedly different, often more exciting movie that doesn’t actually cross paths with the mother-daughter drama until quite late into the 92-minute runtime. In a more heightened setting, the heavily made-up German scientist Dr. Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens) and his domineering wife Hanna (Rebecca Hall) complete their bunker experiments on a trio of sociopathic super-soldiers for a private military contractor. The film’s snappy opening montage, which goes backward in time through several American wars, maintains a particular focus on Operation Paperclip, hinting at Kammler’s Nazi ties as he details his torturous methods on his human weapons — at least two of whom are Black. (The third’s face is intentionally obscured.)  

These racial undertones don’t rise to the surface, nor are they meant to, given the language in which Wingard trades: that of the U.S. military industrial complex fueling horror-tinged imagery, à la his Halloween-meets-The Terminator delight “The Guest.” Social themes inform the plot, but are backgrounded in favor of gory, whizzbang action. Soon, the trio of ruthless slashers begins shooting and hacking their way through innocent towns with inventive weapons, until eventually — much, much, later — they make their way to Celeste’s inadvertent stronghold, where she makes her stand alongside her wise neighbor, Josiah (Reginald VelJohnson) and the slapstick local sheriff, Kovacks (Eric Wareheim).

All the while, a clean-up crew led by Drew Starkey’s kinky, idiosyncratic hit man Cyrus follows close behind, but this is a third, more vestigial movie, which only distracts from the main event. The delayed gratification of the eponymous blitz has its pros and cons. On the one hand, the lengthy drama works to create proximity between Celeste and the viewer: Arjona’s rankled, hard-as-nails performance endears itself to us, sputtering with hints of warmth when she lets herself be protective and maternal. On the other, this also means that the zombified, camo-sporting villains — with their glowing eyes, and shapeless forms against the night sky — peak early with their inventive kills, forcing the climactic standoff to unspool through repetitive beats.

These enhanced soldiers are meant to be super-smart, but this tends to go out the window so they can adopt the flailing cadence of Leatherface from “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” It’s isn’t a plot hole worth obsessing about — or a plot hole at all; combining war movies with horror iconography is clearly Wingard’s M.O. — but it does require a re-adjustment of expectations, owing to lessened stakes.

Still, when you have a defenseless child in the mix, and a mother willing to go to great lengths to protect her, what you’re left with is bound to be a good time, especially as Wingard and composer Matthew Pusti pluck on your nerves with their taut audiovisual assembly. Whatever its structural misfortunes, “Onslaught” is counter-balanced by enough midnight verve and visceral violence to make it just about worthwhile.