Movie Review: ONSLAUGHT

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN

Posted: September 4th, 2026 / 04:58 AM

Rating: R
Stars: Adria Arjona, Dan Stevens, Eric Wareheim, Reginald VelJohnson, Blake Kennedy, Michael Biehn, Alex Pereira, Drew Starkey, Rebecca Hall, Dave Campbell, Tyler Hall
Writer: Simon Barrett, story by Adam Wingard & Simon Barrett
Director: Adam Wingard
Distributor: A24
Release Date: September 4, 2026

Directed by Adam Wingard and scripted by Simon Barrett from a story by both men, ONSLAUGHT puts a sci-fi/horror spin on the well-armed marauders attacking a small target genre.

ONSLAUGHT begins with an onscreen clock and countdown – it’s 7:04 AM, and so many hours and so many minutes until an unnamed event (presumably the onslaught) occurs.

Meanwhile, we’re toggling between the secret facility where modern-day Nazi scientist Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens under a lot of prosthetic makeup) has housed his prize experiment, and the nearby desert trailer park, where cranky Celeste (Adria Arjona) is the on-site manager.

Celeste is an ex-military sniper who is on relatively good terms with her fellow park residents, even the ones who are late on rent. She loves her daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy) but resents it when Daisy’s remarried dad drops the little girl off at the trailer park without prior notice.

Kammler is theoretically present to supervise final test of his three subjects. These are all U.S. soldiers dead or wounded in the line of duty; they have revived with technology that causes them to have as their only goal killing everything they encounter.

We will stipulate here that the filmmakers put their locations to excellent use and are to be saluted for creative and frequent employment of a variety of weapons, notably a chainsaw that may get more of a workout here than it does in the MASSACRE movies where it features in the title.

Arjona is terrific as Celeste, someone not to be trifled with at the best of times, and certainly not when protecting her daughter. Reginald VelJohnson also scores as a fellow veteran and general good soul.

But when we hear why the super-soldiers have been devised, we wonder exactly how fanciful ONSLAUGHT is supposed to be.

Spoiler alert: Kammler believes what our country needs is armed law enforcement (i.e., his soldiers) who won’t be hindered by morality when it comes to firing on civilians in their own country.

The natural reaction of a lot of viewers to this will be, are we meant to surmise that Kammler and his cronies haven’t watched the news in a while, or that the filmmakers haven’t, or that ONSLAUGHT was written long ago and not updated before shooting?

Of all the purposes for the super-soldiers, this one is tragically redundant. Even without the real-world ramifications, what Kammler et al do in the name of seeing if their super-soldiers function as intended should prove to them (it definitely does to us) that regular unenhanced humans are as capable of atrocities against their own people as anything whipped up by scientists.

And calling this out: ONSLAUGHT has a good-guy character for absolutely no reason taunt one of the super-soldiers with a homophobic slur. This seems as though it’s intended to be funny. It’s not. In fact, it’s one of those things that can jerk an audience member right out of the narrative and into questioning the meta of it all.

ONSLAUGHT has great action, but a premise that probably should have spent a little more time in the concept lab.

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