Masked soldiers deployed on domestic soil and an air of conspiratorial paranoia give Adam Wingard’s not-quite-grindhouse siege film “Onslaught” a contemporary pulse, even if this lean, B-movie thriller doesn’t deliver much more than a flicker of its throwback promise.
Wingard, though, does seem freshly liberated in this return to his low-budget thriller roots (“You’re Next,” “The Guest”). He has since spent the last decade in more IP-managed releases: the 2016 “Blair Witch” sequel, a Netflix adaptation of “Death Note” and a pair of “Godzilla vs. Kong” movies.
But the 92-minute “Onslaught,” written by Wingard and his regular collaborator Simon Barrett, is intentionally straightforward — to the point, you could say, of brainlessness. It’s aiming for a very simple slasher setup in the mold of John Carpenter: A single mom and PTSD-riddled former Army sniper, Celeste ( Adria Arjona ), living in a desert trailer park, defends herself and her young daughter (Blake Kennedy) from an invasion of three highly programmed super-soldiers who have sprung out of a nearby military contractor facility.
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Even though “Onslaught” begins with a clock that’s already ticking below 12 hours, the movie takes its time leading to a bloody finale that isn’t quite worth the drumbeat. But Wingard is in no great hurry, and he lingers in the anticipation, for both better and worse.
So early on we get Dan Stevens (deliberately hammy) as a suspiciously old, white-haired Nazi scientist crawling across the room to lick the stiletto-heeled foot of his wife and co-conspirator (a queenly Rebecca Hall, suggesting great depth in her few minutes on screen). From the bodies of dead soldiers, Stevens’ mad scientist has engineered three elite killing machines. They are devoid of personality, with beady lights for eyes. Still, he’s given them nicknames: the Butcher (Alex Pereira), the Cockroach (Dave Campbell) and the Crybaby (Tyler Hall).
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They get out, of course, and begin causing trouble. “Onslaught” likewise lingers on the quickly dispatched operative, Cyrus ( Drew Starkey ), sent to clean up the ensuing mess. Wingard delights in introducing the character, who’s more drugged up and charmingly laid-back than your usual cleanup expert. It’s a lot of set up for a guy who, ultimately, doesn’t do much.
But what’s the rush? Wingard also takes his time surveying the female bodies at the S&M club Cyrus is attending when we meet him, just as he does looking over some of the bloody wreckage left by the super-soldiers. He even, momentarily, takes one of their perspectives in a random killing at a gas station convenience store — a point of view that’s hard to justify, considering there’s no other attempt to consider the inner horrors of the brain-dead soldiers.
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They start unleashing mayhem across a Western plain that looks like it could either be where Wile E. Coyote chases the Roadrunner or the setting of Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland.”
“Onslaught” has a bit of both. The movie is best in its leisurely depiction of life at the Windy Oasis, the trailer-park remove where Celeste has found some rough-hewn sense of peace — away from society and with plenty of room for target practice.
Reginald VelJohnson and Eric Wareheim gamely play Celeste’s neighbors, adding to the eccentric ensemble. But “Onslaught” is most of all a chance for Arjona, a supporting standout in “Hit Man” and “Splitsville,” to show some leading-woman grit. And she does that in Wingard’s quirkily contradictory movie: gleefully violent despite its military satire, curiously unhurried despite its title.
“Onslaught,” an A24 release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong bloody violence, some gore, sexual material/nudity, and language. Running time: 107 minutes. Two stars out of four.
