Review: ‘Onslaught’ is an ’80s-style horror action thriller that doesn’t let up

In Onslaught, a demonic trio of escaped, government-experiment supersoldiers terrorizes a desert trailer park, only to find more than they bargained for. This ’80s-inspired horror action thriller pays homage to John Carpenter, The Terminator, and Mad Max, blending pulsating techno synths, action sleaze, and kinky absurdity. I loved every second of it.  

Adria Arjona (Andor, Hit Man) is Celeste, a former Army sniper who has been hiding from the world as the manager of a rundown desert trailer park since coming back from the Middle East injured and with PTSD. Her only real connection to the world, aside from the other lost souls that live in the trailer park, which wonderfully include both Eric Wareheim and Reginald VelJohnson, is the handful of weekends she gets with her daughter (Blake Kennedy). Unbeknownst to her, Dr. Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens, Legion, Cuckoo) has been doing some genetic experimentation on ultra-violent US military soldiers in a secretive underground bunker not that far from Celeste’s trailer park. 

While the announcement of Stevens led many, including myself, to think this was going to be a secret sequel to The Guest, director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett’s criminally underseen 2014 film, it’s only tonally a spiritual sequel with no direct connection. You won’t mind that when you see the role that Stevens plays, which is basically if Mr. Burns from The Simpsons was a Nazi scientist vampire with a foot fetish (our first introduction is literally dragging himself across the floor to lick Rebecca Hall’s heels). His character, and the performance he delivers, is utterly ridiculous in the best way possible. Since leaving Downton Abbey, he’s become such a strange and adventurous actor that anytime he turns up, you know you’re in for something special. 

The introduction of Kammler helps to solidify the grindhouse playhouse tone of Onslaught, which can go from total seriousness to total absurdity or from horror to balls-to-the-wall action in seconds. A scene of the supersoldiers destroying a gas station is absolutely horrifying, but minutes later we’re cheering as VelJohnson and Arjona shout one-liners as they unleash their own violence. It’s not too dissimilar to this summer’s earlier The End of Oak Street, except coming at the ‘80s from a nocturnal underbelly of icy synths and blue-lit shadows. This is, after all, where the passage of time is shown via a dead man burning up on a barbecue. 

Don’t be mistaken that Onslaught is some kind of grand Mad Max: Fury Road artistic vision that will go down as a ground-breaking masterpiece. It’s not that; it’s a very fun, 90-minute action horror thriller that doesn’t let up and throws everything it’s got at you. At most, my only critique was that it opens with this aggressive title sequence implying a connection of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to World War II Nazi propaganda that leads to you to believe there will be more of a biting political edge to Onslaught that doesn’t emerge. That’s not to say that its central theme of how American soldiers go to fight our wars and are disposed of after to deal with their trauma isn’t damning all on its own. 

I don’t want to spoil the movie, not because there are wild twists, but because it’s such a fun ride to hop on without having to overintellectualize whether you should see it or not. If you’ve ever thrown on Escape From New York and said “Hell yeah!” when it was over, then go see this movie.