It’s never a good sign when a movie reminds you of the Poochie episode from “The Simpsons.” No, Adam Wingard’s low-budget genre mash-up doesn’t have an insufferable, focus-grouped mascot strutting from scene to scene, ruining everything he touches. But “Onslaught” does promise, over and over, that it will eventually visit the proverbial fireworks factory, and it never actually gets there. There’s a literal countdown to the mayhem in the first half of this movie, and when the clock runs out we’re still waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
Adria Arjona stars as Celeste, an ex-Army sniper who lives in a trailer park with a bunch of other ne’er-do-wells. (How often do they do well, you ask? Ne’er.) Celeste thinks she’s having a rough day because her ex-husband dropped her young daughter off unannounced, but that’s a mild inconvenience compared to what’s coming.
Somewhere off in the desert, Dr. Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens) just transformed three American war criminals into unstoppable super soldiers. Apparently he’s never seen a movie or read a comic book before, because he’s a little surprised when they break free, kill everybody, and start marching towards civilization. This is why you should never cancel liberal arts programs. You can take STEM classes for decades but only a film studies course could have prevented this disaster.
The last two short, yet simultaneously padded paragraphs took us halfway through “Onslaught.” The actual onslaught part of the movie doesn’t begin until surprisingly late, and the part where Celeste finally fights back doesn’t kick in until several scenes later. Adam Wingard’s movie may be a throwback to low-budget genre classics of yore — it even has John Carpenter’s beloved Albertus font in the opening credits, just to lull sci-fi/horror fans into complacency — but it doesn’t understand what made those films work. Even though Wingard’s early films certainly did.
Sure, many b-movies never had the budget for wall-to-wall action, so they had to spend a lot of time developing characters and cohesive themes so when the shit finally hit the fan, even if it was brief it meant something. “Onslaught” doesn’t do character development and its theme isn’t particularly coherent. According to this movie war is bad, but also badass. Veterans are celebrated but also condemned as mass murdering maniacs. The government is corrupt and doesn’t care about civilians or soldiers, except sometimes they do, but only sometimes and for no particular reason.
“Onslaught” is full of potentially interesting characters, played by noteworthy actors like Reginald VelJohnson (“Die Hard”) and comedian Eric Wareheim. We spend very little time with anyone except Celeste, so when the onslaught begins, almost every character gets wiped out immediately and it feels like the film wasted its time. When the cast is whittled down to the final fighters, their confrontation with the unstoppable killing machines is disappointingly short and weirdly unimaginative, especially from the filmmaker who brought you the classic genre mash-ups like “You’re Next” and “The Guest,” and gleefully absurd blockbusters like “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.”
Whenever a filmmaker goes back to their roots after toiling for years in the corporate profit mines, it’s a reason to celebrate. But the funny thing is, Wingard’s big budget “Godzilla” blockbusters were more creative and unhinged than “Onslaught.” This new A24 film may be R-rated and mean-spirited but it’s still schlock; a ridiculous b-movie about evil scientists making Frankenstein soldiers. Somehow it’s never as fun as watching a giant ape pummel a bunch of other giant apes at the center of the earth, while using a giant baby ape as a billy club. Compared to that glorious nonsense “Onslaught” looks practically reserved.
But it’s not a total wash. Adria Arjona makes a convincing case that she’s the next big action superstar, provided she can find a film as good as she is. Dan Stevens loves playing his freaky little weirdos, it’s just a shame we don’t see more of him. The violence is sometimes spectacular, even though Wingard prefers to luxuriate in the pitiable deaths of innocent civilians instead of the badass fights between his heroes and villains. Special credit goes to cinematographer Oren Soffer (“The Creator”), whose work is stylish, confident and often makes “Onslaught” look more epic than it is.
All of “Onslaught’s” problems would be forgiven if the action and horror it promises, repeatedly, via on-screen ticking clock, were worth the wait. But the film ends just when it’s getting good. It’s like the whole third act, presumably full of escalating thrills and plot twists, went mysteriously missing at the last second, so all the actors spent the film’s last few minutes riffing before the credits rolled. And the worst part is, even though we’ve finally made it to the end of the film, we never saw that god damned fireworks factory.
“Onslaught” opens exclusively in theaters on Sept. 4.
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