I talk too much. I met 2 new people in the past 7 days, and at least half of that time I was talking about movies. Ridiculous. I have more aspects to my personality, you know! I also… go to work! And… drink matcha! I’m just as surprising and unexpected as, say, the movie Onslaught! Also, I urge you to watch the movie before hearing anything about it, even at the expense of you not reading this review.
Going in Blind
Right, so I waltzed into this movie like that black-and-white old-timey anthropomorphic bucket of popcorn just smiling like a goof and hoping for some cool gunfights and hopefully Adria Arjona abs shots. I thought to myself, “mmm popcorn!” and then stopped thinking. As I mentioned in my review for The Odyssey, I’m a little shit who is a huge movie snob and if I look into a movie before I watch it, I’m gonna be annoying to myself as I watch the movie and to others after. Clearly that latter trait is unchanged.
But I think that this pattern of mine, in going into most films without much information about them, paid off in the case of Onslaught. See, I assumed based on the teasers I watched that this would be a cool John Wick-esque action film. That’s it.
I urge you to do the same. I don’t care if your guess or expectation is wildly off the mark, but I really think that you gotta see this movie sight unseen.
Spoilerz Zonez
Ok. So let’s assume you trusted me, a random internet stranger, bookmarked this page, saw the movie, and then came back to the review to read more. Wow. Thank you. So much. Leave a comment, I’ll send you a little goodie. Like a little toy or something.
Tell me, friend, what does this poster remind you of?
Having seen the movie, I expect you’ll make the connection to, say, one of the most famous slasher movie posters of all time.
This makes sense. In so, so many ways, Onslaught is just a modern version of those fun, campy, B-grade slasher flicks. That’s awesome. It’s just military Michael Myers. It’s fucking Freddy Krueger with a gun. It’s Jason Voorhees and Leatherface and Art the Clown, but with a nasty Nazi origin story. Holy shit hell yeah!
I love love loved that opening montage of the history of American war that moved backwards in time and then capped shit off by flipping the Nazi eagle symbol into the American eagle symbol. It’s up to you to decide if, given the modern state of politics, they’re actually on to something here.
The whole Nazi backstory set the foundations that hey, there’s something deeply fucked up about America, you guys. So when we get to the gas station massacre, the scene wasn’t just a demonstration of the antagonists’ violent tendencies, but a fucking allegory for the fact that mundane places can turn into slaughterhouses because some loon with a gun can inflict a lot of horrific violence upon innocent, unsuspecting people.
In fact, I really liked the gas station in general. It felt like a town hub. It’s a really depressing town hub, but in a movie where the only civilization we see is a dingy, depressing trailer park (and yes, I remember the sex mansion, I’m getting to it), the brightly-lit, buzzing, and populated gas station was a bleak, bleak demonstration of what American community is turning into. We huddle around our gasoline dealer, and then also buy our crappy frozen burritos and blue-colored ice. The boyfriend character just sat there and drew in his coloring book while his girlfriend worked, because what else is there to do in a place like this? And there was a chef making hot food and there were like, a dozen people in there. We even hear a crying baby right before the bad guys burst in. This shit was a family spot. Where you see friends and neighbors and it’s hardly even a surprise. You can buy wire and cigs and hot meals and spank your bald girlfriend without anyone batting an eye. America.
Other than the central trailer park and the gas station, as far as I can remember, we only get three other locations: the Nazi’s mansion, the sex party mansion, and the military bunker. What does that say? Is America just gas, trash poor people homes, the military industrial complex, weird sex, and our rich, Nazi overlords? Wow.
And holy shit, the cinematography? The sheer style of this movie? Goddamn the bad guys were just straight aura farming left right and center. I thoroughly enjoyed just how often they were standing there looking cool as fuck. The bad guys’ character designs were insaaaaane. It was great how the movie made them all just a little bit distinct from one another, but the big bad, “Butcher” was draped in like, shawls and jackets? These guys were huge! The way they barely fit through doorways? So good.
Onslop
So all that cool writing and direction and cinematography aside, even in forgiving that the movie wasn’t a cool shooting movie, I wasn’t totally satisfied.
Our protagonist, if one could call her that, Adria Arjona (who, as an aside, has so many vowels in her name I think a whale could pronounce it), didn’t feel like much of a protagonist at all. The whole film felt like it was out of her control. So much happened to her, and very little happened because of her. I thought that was a bit of a disservice.
Twice Arjona is backed into a corner, screaming her head off, and she’s saved at the last minute by a heroic, out of frame, savior. Even at the end, she just hops in the back seat with a mewling, annoying toddler, all while a drunk cop is the one driving the getaway car. She’s just running and hiding until the very last minute when she finally gets a little more active. YES she gets a cool moment when her past trauma comes full circle and she makes a cool sniper shot. The plot happens around her for so much of the movie. Weird choice.
I don’t think it was a bad idea that the movie didn’t turn into a gun fest. I think that was a decision. They pull a Deadpool by showing us Arjona’s massive gun collection, and even by beginning the movie showing us she practices using her guns often, but then separates her from her huge collection and relegates her to an ancient rifle with only a handful of rounds. The antagonists tote their guns for a decent amount of time, but then find themselves other things to kill with, like the classic chainsaw, and a massive butcher’s knife (which I don’t think you’d find at most gas stations, but whatever).
I think that people will rightly point to the climax and the deaths of the antagonists being underwhelming. Part of it was the lack of true establishing shots of the trailer park, the fact that these “military precision” supersoldiers did not quickly clear the entire area of all life, and that they spent so long aura farming and trying to smoke out two rednecks instead of “military precision”ing their shots through, what I expect are, flimsy trailer park walls. One of the bad guys dies in a stupid car crash. Unkillable super soldier? Meet seatbelts.
But Onslaught a slasher homage movie, y’know? Like I said, a big gunfight would have been antithetical. I think the movie was just backed into a corner by having both the protagonist and antagonists be military-trained.
I haaaaated that the main bad guy, Butcher, was actually a guy from Arjona’s past. Lame.
Finally, Rebecca Hall sequel bait. C’mon. Really? (turns out you should probably look up the other movies director Adam Wingard has made)
I think some people will enjoy this movie a lot. It’s one of those films I cannot wait for the guys at Red Letter Media to talk about. I also think that if someone really didn’t want to watch a slasher, or doesn’t want to have political commentary infused into their movie, they’re gonna hate this film. There’s a genuine chance a lot of people are going to be pissed at this movie.
So that said, I rate Onslaught
YMMV
Go see it! It’s fun! It’s thoughtful! It’s in theaters now!
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