Spooky season is nearly upon us. In blazing hot Texas where I’m writing from, we like to push the concept of spooky season forward in hope to distract us from the weather. And for horror fans, that usually ushers an abundance of new horror films hitting theaters or streaming. While I may not be as diehard of a horror fan as some, I’m still happy to watch this season’s latest offerings to bring on my favorite season a little sooner. One of my favorite subgenres for this time of year (still hot but craving the horror) is grindhouse films. They always seem hotter, messier, less high concept and more fun – i.e., the perfect transition from summer.
A24’s latest horror offering, Onslaught, is coming in at a perfect time. Picking up in director Adam Wingard’s established universe of The Guest and You’re Next, Onslaught focuses around former Army sniper Celeste (Adria Ajorna) who now manages a trailer home community in the middle of the desert. While already deeply struggling with PTSD, depression, and her identity as a mother as she suddenly has to watch her daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy) over the weekend, little does she know her night is about to get much much worse. In a secret military lab mere miles away, three neurologically modified super soldiers who are nigh unstoppable in battle have broken loose, and are headed towards the community to do the only thing they are capable of: killing.
At first glance, Onslaught may seem like a standard action horror gore-fest that accidentally lands in the realm of camp. But I’m certain Wingard knows far better what he is doing. One of the best qualities of this film is that it doesn’t show its full hand of what it is until nearly two thirds through. There are certainly elements that subvert the genre: a strong yet deeply flawed female protagonist whose characterization is grounded in very real problems. A varied community of residents who I could realistically see living and bickering in their rural desert setting. But the cards quickly start showing one by one as we are introduced to Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens), the German scientist who is in charge of the experiments. A Nazi coded scientist in bad old man makeup was certainly my first clue as to what was to come. It only ramps up from there as the death and carnage come cheap, and the action becomes borderline ridiculous. Oh, and don’t forget to throw a few unnecessary nudity shots in the mix. That’s an absolute must for grindhouse.
To their credit, the actors seemed in on it. As I’ve said, Ajorna gives a realistic portrayal of Celeste at first – albeit with a hair-trigger temper I don’t see in many heroines these days. But she gradually slides into the type of bad-ass action chick that even Tarantino would have paid homage to had he seen her in an old reel from the ‘70s. Conversely, the character of Kammler, who, for example, was addicted to submissive kink-play and German covers of American rock songs, was practically cartoonish all throughout. And I actually felt bad for the various residents of the trailer community who were pretty amusing for their few minutes on film before they became gore fodder. I almost wished for them I could just have a sitcom instead of a massacre
While the film benefits from the positive aspects of the grindhouse genre, it also suffers from drawbacks, such as being terrible at tying up loose ends in the plot. Onslaught does a decent job establishing characters, secret government military experiments, deadly enigmatic agents, and lethal enemies, only to have the payoff be painfully brief. During what I thought was a lull, I found myself having to go to the bathroom perhaps 20 minutes before the film’s conclusion, only spending about four minutes maximum away from my seat, only to come back and find two of the three super soldiers had been taken out while I was gone and the final climactic showdown was about to happen. And then? Not much afterwards. I trust that many of the unanswered questions will be addressed in this cinematic universe Wingard is building. As it stands on an individual basis, however, the film suffers.
The best I can say about this or any other grindhouse, is that Onslaught was entertaining. I had fun while watching the action and cared just enough about the characters to add weight to the odds. While it was nowhere near a masterpiece of cinema, watching it made me thoroughly psyched for the beginning of horror season, and hopefully the return of some cooler temperatures.
