Onslaught Review: Adam Wingard’s Chaotic Action Thriller Has Fun But Lacks Real Bite

Adam Wingard is eager to get back to his genre roots with Onslaught, his first non-hyper-budget studio feature since 2014’s The Guest. There’s an ambition here to deliver a sharp political critique of American militarism and fascism, but it also aims to be an old-fashioned, blood-soaked action thriller. The film succeeds more at delivering kinetic genre thrills than it does at landing meaningful sociopolitical commentary, balancing high-octane spectacle against thematic grandstanding.

Onslaught Review

In the opening moments of Onslaught, Wingard lays out a massive promise of cultural critique. He begins in 2008 with the ongoing invasion of the Middle East, tracing American military escalation back to the decades preceding Richard Nixon. Wingard wants to explore how the military apparatus has consistently exerted control over the country, leading to our central protagonist, Celeste (Adria Arjona).

Celeste is an Army sniper stuck in the violent past that ruined her. Obsessed with firearms, she lives with a fractured sense of peace, struggling through a strained relationship with her husband Griffin (Jacob Scipio) and her young daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy). Her world is confined to a dusty New Mexico trailer village populated by eccentric fringe figures, like Josiah (Reginald VelJohnson), an older, grounded neighbor, and Kovacks (Eric Wareheim), an unhinged, drunken local. Celeste manages this isolated enclave, which is soon upended.

One afternoon, Griffin takes Daisy out into the surrounding desert, and right away, we know everything is about to go wrong due to an ominous visual countdown. We’re introduced to the sinister forces operating behind the scenes: Dr. Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens), a balding, maniacal Nazi doctor, and his icy wife, Hanna (Rebecca Hall). Kammler is secretly breeding a lethal squad of genetically engineered super soldiers with one primary objective: wiping out civilians. Throughout this chaos, Onslaught establishes a brutal cat-and-mouse dynamic across the arid desert landscape.

It’s never explained why they are doing this. Perhaps it’s intended as a broad critique of an unchecked police state hunting down its own citizens, but the idea never crystallizes into anything coherent. Still, the trio of super soldiers, led by a menacing enforcer known as The Butcher (Alex Pereira), brings an immense physical presence to the screen. These killing machines mow through civilians with a brutal efficiency that feels cold and senseless, capturing how desensitized our culture has become to sudden violence. The stunt performers and fighters deserve credit for selling that physical weight with terrifying poise.

Meanwhile, we get the signature craziness of a Wingard and Simon Barrett collaboration through Cyrus (Drew Starkey), an MK-Ultra-style operative and detective dispatched to investigate the military outbreak. We meet Cyrus as a hedonistic, sex-crazed, manic figure doing bumps of MDMA in the middle of a raid. Throughout the night, he operates as an eccentric foil pursuing the rogue soldiers, though the script never figures out what to do with his subplot, leaving his arc stranded in narrative limbo.

One of the stranger elements of the film is how much of its world-building fails to translate into direct action. The narrative threads surrounding Starkey’s detective never pay off in the climax. Instead, the lore sits there as background flavor. While it gives the impression of an expanded universe, it also robs the central story of clean setups and satisfying payoffs, creating a frustrating disconnect between the lore and the actual plot.

Most of the physical heavy lifting falls onto Adria Arjona, who commits to the grueling action. Even so, the super soldiers are given a couple of extended set pieces to showcase their menace. The pacing moves like a two-and-a-half-hour script chopped down into a tight 92 minutes. That speed keeps things entertaining, but the narrative feels scattered in the rush. Rebecca Hall and Dan Stevens are great in their brief roles, even with limited screen time.

Is Onslaught worth watching?

Arjona anchors the movie with intense grit, and both Reginald VelJohnson and young Blake Kennedy deliver strong supporting turns. Wingard delivers a wild, high-octane action-horror hybrid that works in bursts, even if its anti-authoritarian themes are blunt and half-baked. Onslaught is a fun, messy ride, but it carries a lot less thematic bite than it thinks it does.

Onslaught releases in theaters on September 4.

Onslaught Review: Adam Wingard’s Chaotic Action Thriller Has Fun But Lacks Real Bite