It seems Hans has been experimenting on seriously wounded veterans from America’s various Forever Wars in the deserts and has perfected three killing machines whose brute force cannot stop, will not stop, until they meet an immovable object. Her name’s Celeste.
Also a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, Celeste is content enough to make ends meet by working as the superintendent (or perhaps glorified kapo) for the other vets who populate a remote trailer park in the American Southwest. She’s friendly with her avuncular neighbor Josiah (Reginald VelJohnson) and tolerates the rants of her conspiracy theorist deadbeat tenant Kovacks (Eric Wareheim), but mostly wants to keep her head down and lick her wounds in perpetuity. That is a problem for her ex-husband, though, and more pertinently their young daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy), whom Celeste sees only every other weekend.
Unfortunately, today turns out to fall on the same weekend where the Nazi down the road reaches a crescendo in his work, raising serious questions as to whether this trailer park of abandoned American soldiers was purposefully left in the path of any potential lab breaks? There are plenty of other civilians, too, who get in the way of the three murderous super-soldiers, leading to a rather meek and stoned government fixer (Drew Starkey) to clean up the mess by any means necessary.
Onslaught has plenty of subtextual ice beneath its calm surface, but the shrewdness of Wingard and Barrett’s approach is their refusal to dive deeper, at least in terms of exposition or superfluous dialogue. The worldbuilding of the film relies almost wholly on aesthetics and “vibes,” to use the modern online parlance. The picture retains the inviting sleek neons of Wingard’s detour into Godzilla vs. Kong kitsch, but it pairs nicely here with the stark, barren landscapes of the desert at night.
Shot mostly in crisp wide and medium shots and diegetic lighting, the darkness of the red waste juxtaposes the otherworldly fluorescence of a gas station’s overhang, and the multitude of stars bear witness to the carnage exacted on a trailer park. The film echoes the primal simplicity of Carpenter’s best films in the 1970s and ‘80s while chasing The Guest team’s more current muses.
One of those is the aforementioned cynicism and paranoia of governmental authority that feels a lot less like a pulp novel in 2026, but it is also the dread of parental responsibility adorned by Celeste. Embodying that woman, Arjona appears to be on the cusp of stardom. Already a beguiling presence in Hit Man, and a haunting one in Andor, she gets to tap into some Sigourney Weaver and modern Jamie Lee Curtis grit here and looks ripped straight from a Drew Struzan poster when rocking a chainsaw in one hand and a makeshift eyepatch-bandana across her face.
