Publication Date: 09-06-2026

Onslaught (2026) review

Dir. Adam Wingard

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★

You could almost envision director Adam Wingard — fresh off shooting massive blockbusters Godzilla vs. Kong and its sequel — rip off his suitcoat, trade it for a sleeveless shirt, and hit the road for New Mexico to return to his bloody, horror/thriller roots with Onslaught. For one, Wingard turned down the opportunity and subsequent payday that the third Godzilla/King Kong rematch would’ve afforded him in order to bring a story him and Simon Barrett (the sole credited screenwriter) conceptualized. Alas, it winds up being too much and not enough, with a rudimentary plot that takes a long time to get into motion.

Wingard’s goal with Onslaught is for the film to harken back to the grungy aesthetics of Grindhouse and adopt the kind of full-throated, ultraviolent tendencies of John Carpenter, one of the many evident influences on this project. The film’s opening credits are a remix of American history; a rapid-cut montage that works backwards chronologically, segueing from the Obama administration pulling out of the Iraq War to Hitler’s Nazi Germany. The takeaway message is vague, but it sure is stimulating for the senses.

It gives way for a film that, despite being pretty simplistic, even generic, spends much of its 90-minute runtime revving up before launching into motion. We meet Celeste (Adria Arjona), a former Army sniper who now resides in a ramshackle trailer park in the desert of New Mexico and cares for her young daughter, Daisy (Blake Kennedy). Meanwhile, a few dozen miles away, Dr. Hans Kammler (a scenery-chewing Dan Stevens sporting a horrific, Evil Doc Brown-looking bald-cap) works in a government lab, and has just finished turning the bodies of three dead soldiers into indestructible killing-machines for use on search-and-destroy missions. For some reason, soldiers at the lab agree to test the capabilities of these merciless creations, and once everyone is killed, the soldiers exit the lab and are on the loose in the middle of the night.

They eventually make their way to the trailer park after the film is more-than-half-over. If there’s a silver lining to the glacial pacing, it’s that we do get to spend a little bit of time getting acquainted with Celeste’s neighbors. Boy, are they an eclectic bunch. Josiah (Reginald VelJohnson of Die Hard fame) is a former Vietnam vet with a good heart but a strong proclivity with combat. Conversely, Kovacks (Eric Wareheim) is a chickenshit buffoon of a cop. A veteran of absurd comedy thanks to his work on many Adult Swim shows, Wareheim’s comic relief is quite strong.

Kovacks is at the center of one scene that I have no problem admitting had me wheezing with laughter. After clumsily shooting rounds into the soldiers once they descend upon the trailer park, Kovacks sprints to his cop car, floors it in reverse, and calls for backup. If Wareheim’s incessant screaming as his car is absorbing bullets isn’t funny enough, of all the songs to play on his squad car radio, Wingard and company landed on a corny 80s children’s song from McGruff the Crime Dog of all souls: “My life is really great / I’m gonna celebrate / Cause, I’m glad I’m me / Yes I’m glad I’m me!” It took a lot of Googling to pinpoint this track, mind you. Mediocre movie aside, a great belly-laugh like that is not nothing.

Wingard has proven he’s always reliable when it comes to incorporating music into his movies — and not conventional needle-drops either. Onslaught features a banger Steely Dan deep-cut that echoes how the Dwight Twilley Band’s “Looking for the Magic” was employed in his splatter flick You’re Next. The tunes had flavor and personality to a film that too often feels void of it thanks to an oppressively grim color palette.

Drew Starkey’s drugged-up, sex-fiend cleaner arrives in the second act, but proves to be an underutilized empty vessel. Rebecca Hall’s turn as Dr. Kammler’s wife is confined to just a couple scenes, and even if Arjona is physically capable and overall likable in her role, her chemistry with Kennedy as her plucky daughter is scant, and equally suspect is her parenting advice. There’s a scene in which mom is frustrated by the dainty way in which her daughter eats a burrito, and proceeds to teach her the slovenly way in which to do so. Because, you know, single mothers especially hate when their daughters are polite and well-behaved.

Onslaught boils down to a lot of graphic violence and very little humor or human intrigue to counterbalance its conceit. Shot with IMAX cameras, the film’s ensuing visual slickness all-but nullifies the Grindhouse aesthetic it’s attempting to achieve. It might be a return-to-form for Wingard in some ways, but it also feels like an anarchist free-for-all for a director who was caught up in the web of nine-figure, franchise tentpole projects for several years. There’s nothing wrong with that, but when the material is this slight, there’s nothing very memorable about it either.

Starring: Adria Arjona, Reginald VelJohnson, Blake Kennedy, Alex Pereira, Eric Wareheim, Dan Stevens, Michael Biehn, Drew Starkey, Rebecca Hall, Maurice Greene, and Jacob Scipio. Directed by: Adam Wingard.