“Onslaught” Rushes into Nothing

Onslaught (Adam Wingard, 2026) 2 out of 5 stars

With his 2021 Godzilla vs. Kong and 2024 Godzilla x Kong, director Adam Wingard showed himself more than capable of handling a big-budget action flick (whatever the narrative limitations of those films). In his latest, Onslaught, he starts the show with the promise of similar adrenaline-fueled delights, only to fumble the cinematic ball on the way to a flat finale. The result feels all the more disappointing given how much the opening kicks ass.

Onslaught is a near-perfect example of wasted setup, characters introduced only to be dispatched far too early or never heard from again. Instead of building emotional payoffs from meticulous story structure, Wingard doubles down on gore and mayhem, both untethered to meaningful consequence. There’s not much rhyme or reason to what transpires.

And yet, the introduction very much resonates, its images and ideas still lingering in my brain days after watching. Following a short sequence of protagonist Celeste (Adria Arjona, Splitsville)—an army veteran living in the desert as the manager of a trailer park—shooting at targets with, among other guns, an M16 rifle, we cut to a fast-paced montage of fascists past and present. This in turns leads us to the home of an over-the-top modern-day Nazi scientist, Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens, Abigail), whose wife, Hanna (Rebecca Hall, The Night House), keeps him literally underfoot (it’s a BDSM thing). He’s got plans for the future, and they are not for the faint of heart. It’s too bad that his rather obvious prosthetic bald head, white wig, and ruined eye detract from the effect.

Kammler’s lab is preparing to test zombie super soldiers, resurrected from psychotic dead servicemen and engineered to be nearly unstoppable. The notion is to create a new breed of killer who can terrorize civilian populations. That could never happen, right?

The experiment does not go as planned, and many who expected to oversee the program die, our villains then set loose to murder at will. Which brings us back to Celeste, who now has her daughter, Daisy, in tow (courtesy of a dad who appears once and then no more – see above). The two threads converge, and she must show what she’s made of, and then some. Good thing she’s a former sniper.

By the third or fourth time Wingard landed on a backlit shot of his undead warriors, their eyes glowing in the dark, I realized he no longer knew what he was doing. Worse, after the lengthy buildup of these guys’ ostensible invulnerability—coupled with copious collateral casualties—they prove remarkable easy to execute. In addition, there is a senseless side plot featuring a blonde government agent, Cyrus (Drew Starkey, Queer)—also into BDSM—that adds up to very little. At least we have the great Reginald VelJohnson (Die Hard) along for the ride. Otherwise, Onslaught fizzles far too quickly.