by Jake Bourgeois, Contributing Writer
Few stars are hotter right now than Adria Arjona.
The actress dazzled in Andor, popped up in talked about indies like Blink Twiceand Hit Man, and is set to soar to even bigger heights with key roles upcoming in Man of Tomorrow and Michael B. Jordan’s remake of The Thomas Crown Affair. She’s an actress that immediately garners interest when I see she’s in a new project.
Make that new project one where she’s playing a badass protecting her own from some rogue super soldier experiments gone wrong, and I’m definitely interested.
Having gone into Onslaught with that brief summary in my head, I was not prepared for how weird this movie is from jump—and how much I enjoyed that. After a brief intro, showing us just how skilled and traumatized our lead heroine is, we smash cut to a psychedelic montage about warfare and government secrets and then are introduced to Dan Stevens as a super weird little German scientist in charge of this super-secret defense contractor project alongside a scene-chewing Michael Biehn as the militaristic figure. As we follow the experimentation, both Stevens and director Adam Wingard are absolutely cooking. It’s hitting all the best notes from the duo’s team-up in 2014’s The Guest. Stevens is hamming it up to his villainous best (aided by a wonderfully terrible partial bald cap and blind eye). The use of light and shadows is immaculate. The synthy score is bumping hard.
While this is happening, the film is setting up the world of the trailer park and Arjona’s Celeste, introducing us to the inhabitants (including Vietnam vet Reginald VelJohnson) and her strained relationship to both her daughter and the father of her child. It’s a colorful cast of characters I was very much looking forward to getting systematically wiped out.
Once, the action really starts, the movie maintained my buzz as it showcases the threat these men pose against both highly trained operatives and the unsuspecting public. The violence is gruesome in the best way possible. We’re also introduced to a fixer type character, played by Drew Starkey, via a club with lots of leather and gimp masks, which got me excited that we were keeping this weird energy up the whole way through.
Much to my surprise, when the movie becomes what I was expecting it let me down a bit. Once it becomes a showdown between our heroes and our villains, I started questioning more and the cracks began to show. The ruthless villains we’ve seen be so efficient take on the worst characteristic of slashers, seemingly content to bide their time to give our characters time for multiple escapes and leisurely conversations. Our heroes, meanwhile, are content to be prudent, yet somehow are able to run screaming from one of the trailer parks handful of flimsy dwellings. Though she gets a couple of cool moments, the third act doesn’t really deliver what it promises Celeste can do at the top.
I’m also not sure how a movie that uses a countdown clock for its first half can be let down so much by pacing in just 92 minutes. Aside from how leisurely our soldiers seem in the final act, the parallel investigation running to track down the expensive experiments seems similarly unhurried. The result is the b-plot doesn’t really amount to much in the end.
The overall result of Onslaught running out of steam toward the end left me walking out slightly disappointed it couldn’t live up to the fun I was having up front, though I’m not quite willing to completely throw out those initial feelings.
Rating: Liked It
Onslaught is currently available to watch in theaters.
You can read more from Jake Bourgeois, and follow him on Bluesky and Letterboxd