Adam Wingard’s latest genre mashup throws a traumatized former sniper into the middle of a super soldier killing spree.
Adria Arjona leads Onslaught as Celeste, a former military sniper whose life has taken a quiet but messy turn since leaving. After becoming a manager at a trailer park in New Mexico, Celeste spends her days making sure the tenants pay rent, drinking and taking interest in her collection of firearms she keeps in the home.
Her routine comes to a stop when her ex-husband unexpectedly drops off their daughter for the night. He makes a claim he has to deal with a work emergency. Celeste is barely prepared to have a child in the house. She certainly isn’t prepared for what’s about to happen next.
Not far from the trailer park, a government operation experiments with creating super soldiers. When three of those experiments escape, their hunting spree starts. Celeste and her neighbors find themselves directly in their path.
Protecting her daughter and friends from the soldiers, Celeste proves she is still a good shot with a rifle and picks up right where she left off. When I asked Arjona what those fighting sequences were like, she said, “You know I only had one eye to do a lot of these stunts and to run around with a baby on my hip and a gun in my hand it was a lot…there were so many elements to playing Celeste that as the night shoots progressed it kept getting more and more challenging but at the same time more and more fun.”
Courtesy: A24
But there’s more to the film than what happens on screen.
Adam Wingard is no stranger to the horror genre. When asked what prompted him to think of the idea of genetically enhanced soldiers, he says, “The thing about slasher villains is that a lot of them are very similar, even their usage of weapons and those kinds of things are the same. Even though it sounds like a small thing, re-contexualizing a slasher villain in the context of a military character felt kind of simple, but fresh and current in a way that I had never seen before.”
Dan Stevens plays a strange German scientist responsible for transforming three American soldiers into killing machines. Stevens has previously worked with Wingard and brings a unique and unhinged energy to the role.
Stevens says, “We knew we wanted to create something really weird and special and strange…I’m delighted with what we came up with. I had a very strange, strange costume.”
Courtesy: A24
As the film continues, the chaos brings another familiar face into the mix.
The cast also includes Outer Banks star, Drew Starkey. Starkey plays a government agent who appears to be a good guy brought in to contain the situation. But the script has a darker plan for his character. He isn’t there to rescue the townspeople caught in the crossfire. Instead, his orders are to eliminate whoever survives after the super soldiers finish the attack.
Courtesy: A24
Starkey says, “I’m new to the world of Adam Wingard and stepping into a new world, a new environment it’s always a blast, but I was excited for the opportunity to work with a great collaborator like Adam. He invites so much collaboration and so much of your opinion is valued in crafting what you want to do and telling the story. It was just fun.”
As everything comes together, the movie keeps the action moving until the end.
Onslaught is a fun mix of action, horror and thrills that keeps things exciting. With Adria Arjona at the center of the cast, the moviehas a lead who can deliver all the sides of Celeste and the chaos that comes with having a bunch of super soldiers.
