“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
John Lydon’s famous last words whilst sitting on the stage staring at the crowd at the climax of The Sex Pistols concert at The Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco could have been uttered after watching Adam Wingard’s highly anticipated return to midnight movie making, Onslaught.
Early Wingard movies, You’re Next and The Guest, like Lydon and the Pistols had that anarchic, punk sensibility, like being glassed in the face then drenched in spit to add insult to injury during a gig at the 100 Club in the 1970s.
Those lawless triumphs led Wingard to the lucrative world of IP like Blair Witch, Death Note, and two Godzilla films – with varying degrees of success.
So, when Onslaught opens up with full clip energy, that John Carpenter font, Adria Arjona’s ex-sniper, Celeste Cross pulverising pumpkin heads in the desert with heavy weaponry, a black helicopter flying dangerously low to the ground, our senses assaulted by Adam Curtis-style credits depicting the Nazification of the American military, we have every reason to believe that we are in for a fucking treat.
Wingard slathers on his weird kinks with Dan Stevens’ Nazi scientist Hans Kammler licking the toes of his wife Hanna, played by Rebecca Hall. Kammler has the fashion chic of a balding Herman Goering, fascist cape swirling in his wake as Krautrock pulses through the soundtrack. He’s a bleach blond Max Wall crossed with Dragon from The Eiger Sanction stepping into an alternative universe episode of Airwolf.
Kammler leads a top-secret super-soldier programme that is destined to end up as a colossal clusterfuck because the servicemen selected to be experimented on have monikers like The Crybaby, The Cockroach, and The Butcher. Kammler watches wide eyed, smoking amongst his charges exposed brains as they go through their conditioning, throwing zingers like, “Progress doesn’t crawl on its belly like a worm!”
Further genre catnip is introduced in the form of sci-fi hall of famer Michael Biehn as government agent Baylor who wants results now. Biehn, the alumni of The Terminator and Aliens, foundational touchstones for Wingard and his contemporaries adds considerable weight to Onslaught’s B-movie credentials.
Predictably (no insult), the test is a brutally one-sided affair played out in part over retro video screens as the super soldiers massacre an elite team of unenhanced warriors. Wingard’s creations are physically imposing monsters, a hybrid of evil glowing eyes, and pitch-black silhouettes lifted from The Fog, Friday the 13th, The Keep, Universal Soldier and of course The Terminator.
So far, we’re in great hands and when trio escapes, we’re in for the bloody New Mexico massacre we thoroughly deserve. Hanna Kammler describes them as, “A military faction without conscience to be deployed against their own populace.”
Alongside Hanna’s chilling description, and when we see a column of men being led into the military facility at gunpoint, the comparison to the reprehensible deployment of ICE on American streets is unequivocable and as unsubtle as the scumbags who shot Oscar Belgal in his car whilst his five-year-old son sat in the back seat.
The wanton barbarity of the trio, (Trump, Hegseth, and Venturella anyone?) gains further traction in wake of the news that Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, accused of alcohol addiction and abuse, and overseeing war crimes against Iran, is to livestream the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan who shot and killed thirteen people at a military base in 2009.
The depths of the Trump administration’s depravity truly know no bounds as Hasan is paralysed.
Disappointment strikes when the showdown between the trio and Celeste, aided by her disparate band of Hawksian misfits who live with her in the trailer park, finally unfolds. We’re forever teased Celeste letting loose with her considerable arsenal of firearms but somehow Wingard fumbles the third act, what should be the equivalent to The Terminator’s infamous Police Station set-piece is strangely underwhelming, despite the gore, the exquisite nighttime cinematography and thunderous sound effects.
Missed opportunities aside, Adria Arjona is a compelling lead in the Linda Hamilton Sarah Connor mould, and her onscreen daughter has the same scream as Newt in Aliens. Her talents maybe underused in Onslaught, but Arjola’s exploits as Celeste deserve a sequel. Similarly Drew Starky’s idiosyncratic government operative Cyrus has the makings of a cult classic character but is given scant opportunity to fully achieve that status.
Having said that maybe Wingard is sticking close to B-movie sensibilities where films never truly fulfil their promise, but we love them anyway; if we’re honest, didn’t even Escape from New York need a couple of extra action scenes?
As John Lydon said, “If you are pissing people off, you know you are doing something right.”