Courtney Howard // Film Critic
ONSLAUGHT
Rated R, 1 hour and 32 minutes
Directed by: Adam Wingard
Starring: Adria Arjona, Reginald VelJohnson, Drew Starkey, Dan Stevens, Eric Wareheim, Michael Biehn, Blake Kennedy, Rebecca Hall, Alex Pereira, Dave Campbell, Tyler Hall, Jacob Scipio
ONSLAUGHT is an unpleasant, ultraviolent grindhouse offering retrofitted for the 2AM cable TV crowd once they’re high as a kite. Director Adam Wingard crafts what’s essentially a hollow love letter to John Carpenter and Roger Corman flicks with a cavalcade of homages, from the font down to the score, but without much artistic impetus to innovate and make those references function to their greatest abilities. Even with kink and killing on the menu, this tale about a mom protecting her young daughter against three unrelentingly psychotic mercenaries is less fun than the premise promises. Still, there’s somewhat of a likeability that helps us feel tethered to it despite its many severe faults.
War Vet Celeste (Adria Arjona) feels safe in the middle of nowhere in the dry deserts of New Mexico. She’s the onsite manager of Windy Oasis Trailer Park – a place where her duties don’t require much of her beyond collecting rent and light maintenance on the sparse property. Still, she’s having a tough time as she continues to suffer from the occasional PTSD flare-up, and her ex-hubby Griffin (Jacob Scipio) is threatening to take custody of their precocious 7-year-old daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy). Celeste takes comfort in target practice to sharpen her skills and boozing to numb her ills. Little does she know a hellfire is about to rain down.
Just as Celeste is dealt a surprise weekend visit with Daisy, a top secret science experiment goes pear-shaped on the grounds of a nearby military base. Aging Nazi scientist Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens) has genetically engineered three beefy, unstoppable super soldiers, built to withstand pain and follow orders. They include specialist Cry Baby (Tyler Hall), ex-Marine The Cockroach (Dave Campbell) and former soldier The Butcher (Alex Pereira). He’s planned to sell them off to a government rep (Michael Biehn), however, all three escape their confines by outsmarting their captors and creator (Frankenstein’s Myth, anyone?!) and go on a rampage. As mysterious, skunk-fauxhawk’d contractor Cyrus (Drew Starkey) is tasked to clean up their mess, Celeste must defend herself, her little girl and her kindly Vietnam Vet tenant Josiah (Reginald VelJohnson) from the murderous melee.
It’s admirable that Wingard – who’s been busy helming big blockbusters like GODZILLA VS. KONG and GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE over the past 5 years – takes a vacation from studio projects to direct a smaller scale, insular indie, going back to his roots. Trouble is, his worst leanings as a director there have carried over here, not bothering to shore up the screenplay’s failings. We’ll never get another YOU’RE NEXT or THE GUEST (of which ONSLAUGHT plays as a spiritual relative) from him, nor his creative collaborator Simon Barrett. They undermine the audience’s intelligence, telling us three different times (and three different ways) that the military operation has gone awry as if we’ve forgotten. There’s little going on behind the mask of their Carpenter and Corman narrative inspirations and inspired sentiments, leading to a tangible reductive feeling overall. Even the upscale sleaze of the BDSM club where Cyrus is introduced is passé. We’re also supposed to laugh at him as he tries to do his professional job while rolling on molly, but the jokes just don’t land. Same goes for all the gags involving Eric Wareheim, who plays a loudmouth, dorky divorcee cop living in Windy Oasis.
The pair’s ability to world build is mediocre at best, seemingly moving towards stating something of substance when the film abruptly ends. Kammler’s domineering wife Hannah (Rebecca Hall) is dealt short shrift as we’re dying to know who she is in the scope of things. The ruthless mercs aren’t very unrelenting. They’ll stop every now and then to regroup for a foggy hero shot or silently stalk their prey. Despite being given backstories, it’s hard to differentiate Cry Baby, The Butcher and The Cockroach as individuals beyond their weapons of choice as they’re all similarly dressed in black fatigues and masks at night. Internally, the fear factor character drive is lacking. They lay waste to truck stop patrons and there’s little to no dread powering those action sequences. It’s vulgar violence for vulgarity’s sake.
Character construction is too lean – specifically when it comes to Celeste. Her lone obstacle is to protect her kid while battling baddies and her psychosis. She’s not tasked to change, nor to learn anything new. Her skill sets are the exact same when she begins her journey as when it ends. That’s not to say Arjona doesn’t add depth and dimension to her Strong Female Character, because she does. She hits her Ripley-esque one-liners like, “You fucked with the wrong mom,” with rousing sass and spirit. She elevates the material, pouring in gobs of heart and soul and layering in a deeply textured vulnerability, gifting Celeste with an interesting inner life. Though nuance isn’t what the film traffics in, her performance has a prismatic quality. In terms of supporting roles, VelJohnson is terrific and shares a buoyant chemistry with Arjona.
There’s certainly room in the genre for the kind of vicious, unsentimental violence that’s meant to alarm and unnerve. Yet ONSLAUGHT fails to strike those right moments, giggling with glee at its own brutality (a la Jimmy Fallon laughing at his own jokes), taking itself far too seriously for its heightened gimmick. We see ourselves less as the heroine who’s been run ragged and more as the innocent trailer park victim who’s gunned down and cooking himself on his own barbeque grill. And perhaps that’s the point of this all.
Grade: 2 out of 5
ONSLAUGHT will be in theaters on September 4.
