Onslaught

A rogue team of genetically engineered super-soldiers breaks loose from a secret base and start killing everyone they encounter, forcing a former soldier to rejoin the fight.

I love The Guest, and I love Dan Stevens. I mention this because Dan Stevens starred in The Guest, which was written and directed by Adam Wingard. Adam Wingard also wrote and directed this movie, Onslaught, which Dan Stevens also stars in, but as a different character than the one that he played in The Guest. This would normally be a given, different movies, different characters, except that The Guest and Onslaught both take place in the same world, so it's something that does need to be made clear. Also they're probably going to return with a third movie that takes place in this world too, turning the whole thing into a Shared Universe trilogy. The Guestverse, if you will.

So I'm happy about that, becauase as I'm sure you all know by now, I love my Shared Universes. The terrible ones too, in their way. I even love the really terrible ones... kind of. Also, I love Adria Arjona as well, and not just because Andor is great.

Put this all together, and it means that I am definitely ready for this film...

So...

Celeste is a former Army sniper struggling with a bad case of PTSD after being "in the shit" during one of America's many War/Not Wars.

After having served her country, Celeste returned home with a plethora of anger issues, anti-social tendencies, and the usual all-around general difficulties at re-entering civilian life. As a result, things haven’t gone that great for her. Not only has her marriage fallen apart, her husband having since remarried, she's also lost primary custody of her daughter, an overly-precocious preternaturally cute movie-toddler/hipster named Daisy.

As the cherry on top of her shit sundae of a life, Celeste lives out in Methland U.S.A., a dusty trashburg on the edge of the desert, where she lives and works as the manager of an extra shitty trailer park. She’s also a 2nd Amendment weirdo, so she wakes up early every day, takes a "Red Flag" amount of guns out to the middle of nowhere, and shoots at trash. Things like Jack O'lanterns... or probably beer bottles, I assume. I bet rusted out cars too. Maybe some old washing machines.

The point is, Celeste is not in a great place at the moment, physically or mentally.

But the whole time, Celeste is unaware that there’s only 11 hours, 41 minutes, and 55 seconds until something hits the fan, shit presumably. Who knows? I guess we will see. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s bad news for Celeste, and not just because her ex has just surprise-dropped-off Daisy for the weekend, but also because her PTSD still gnaws at her... big time. She gets The Shakes, and she has The Flashbacks too.

It's the war, man… it haunts her.

Meanwhile, the legacy of Operation Paperclip continues to pose the question of whether it was a stain on America, or just par for the course when it comes to our country's history of white supremacy…

What’s Operation Paperclip, you ask?

Operation Paperclip was the name of a secret United States intelligence program that began at the end of World War 2, as the Allies raced across Germany, looking to “shake hands with the Russians as far east as possible," and discovered a wealth of scientific talent and advanced research along the way. It was basically the U.S. looking to loot as much of Nazi Germany as possible before the Russians did. The end result was almost 2000 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, many of whom were active members of the Nazi Party, with some also being part of The Schutzstaffel, more commonly known as the SS, being secretly brought to America. The eventual scientific innovations these monsters would create in the shadows for the U.S. government, not only fueled the Cold War, as well as the American space effort, but various corporate and private interests in this country went on to make billions and billions of dollars off of them, and still do to this day...

One of the most notable names was Wernher von Braun, the man who designed and developed the V-2 rocket, the first long-range guided ballistic missile, and the first human-made object to travel into outer space in June of 1944. Upon arriving in America, von Braun was immediately integrated into NASA, where he served as director of the Marshall Space Flight Center at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, and was the chief architect of the Saturn V rocket, the massive vehicle that took the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon.

Wernher von Braun joined the Nazi party in 1937. Then, in 1940, he joined the Allgemeine SS—the political core of the Nazi Schutzstaffel, tasked with policing and enforcing Nazi racial policies, and internal state security—and received the rank SS Sturmbannführer (a high ranking Nazi officer) from the hand of Heinrich Himmler himself in 1943. After the war, while living in unpunished luxury in the land of the free and the home of the brave, cheek to jowl alongside members of the "greatest" generation, he was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in '67, and also received the National Medal of Science in 1975. Disney even made videos of him, with the intent that he inspire American children with his vision of the future of humanity in space.

In short, Operation Paperclip is a just one facet of "The Problem" with America.

But I digress…

It’s at this point in the film that we meet a beneficiary of that very program, Dr. Hans Kammler, and his wife and Domme, Hannah Kammler.

Because out in the desert, in a remote hidden facility owned by a shadowy private military defense contractor called Priapus (after a minor Greek and Roman god of fertility, gardens, livestock, and male genitalia), Dr. Hans Kammler is building super-soldiers for the United States government.

Currently, Dr. Kammler has three very promising subjects, dubbed Crybaby, Cockroach, and the Butcher. These men were selected from US military personnel based on their possessing an overabundance of cruelty, a complete lack of remorse or mercy, a dedication to completing their mission, and a demonstrated ability to survive the ravages of war. Through a series of tortuous surgical modifications and relentless psychological conditioning, Dr. Kammler has taken these monsters and he has made them much worse, imbuing them with enhanced strength, endurance, and durability, as well as night-vision, and a seemingly insatiable drive to kill.

When Agent Baylor arrives to observes an exercise in which regular soldiers test the trio's abilities. The trio easily slaughter the soldiers, but then appear to suffer from heart attacks and die. But when Dr. Kammler, Agent Baylor, and the facility’s staff enter the testing area to gather data and samples, it turns out that the trio had actually lowered their heart rates in order to only appear dead…

They kill everyone and break out of the facility.

Remember that ticking clock? Counting down from 11 hours, 41 minutes, and 55 seconds? Well, time is up...

These super-soldiers were designed for “urban pacification” and they prove their efficiency when they walk out of the darkness of the desert, and straight into a busy truck stop.

It’s a bloodbath.

Hannah Kammler assumes control of the program and contracts the services of a “cleaner” named Cyrus, who specializes in containing these kinds of situations. As the super-soldiers were designed for use against civilian populations, she orders Cyrus not to engage, but instead to report on the super-soldiers’ performance, and clean up the aftermath. Cyrus was in the middle of a big night he had planned with a bunch of black latex gimp suit clad sex workers, and had just taken 100mg of MDMA, but, well… duty calls.

Celeste and Daisy just missed the super soldiers at the truck stop, and while Cyrus is cleaning up the massacre there, using a few double-taps, some spilled gas, and a lit match, the mother/daughter pair are back at the trailer park "enjoying" a night of microwave burritos and the awkward bonding of a child enduring an evening with the one parent that means well, but just can't help being a fuck-up.

Soon enough, the super-soldiers happen upon the trailer park, and then they run straight into Celeste and its other desert-rat denizens.

Blood. Blood. Blood and fire.

In the end, Cyrus reports to Hannah that it was a successful demonstration of the super-soldiers capabilities, and she then orders him to keep the survivors under observation, perhaps for future testing. Cyrus approaches the survivors and offers to pay them off generously, give them new identities, and relocate them all in exchange for their silence.

The end credits show us that there are conspiracy theories growing online, obsessed not only with what exactly happened in the desert, at the truck stop, and at the trailer park, but how there weren't any bodies recovered. Where did they all go? And why? As bits and pieces dribble out onto the 'net, creating a hazy picture, we learn that the survivors were all moved to Seward, Alaska, which looks lovely, or at the very least, better than Methville, U.S.A....

The End

Despite originally referring to Onslaught as a "spiritual sequel" to The Guest, writer/director Adam Wingard stated that Onslaught not only takes place in the same continuity as The Guest, but so does his home invasion slasher flick, You're Next. The linking thread for all of them is the Private Military Contractor known as KPG. A shadowy corporate entity first referenced in You're Next, it's expanded on in The Guest, as KPG is trying to capture the film's main character, and now, in Onslaught, Priapus–the group that Dr. Kammler works for–is supposed to be a subsidiary of KPG. But what does KPG stand for?

That remains to be seen...

Shared Universe talk aside, Onslaught starts out with some very heavy vibes of the classic exploitation grindhouse variety, wearing its influences clearly on its sleeve. There's bits of John Carpenter, in the vein of some of his classic work like Assault on Precinct 13 and Escape from New York. There's obviously bits of Terminator on display, as well as Universal Soldier and Dog Soldiers and Doomsday and Predator and Green Room and Purge 2. On and on and on. If not directly, than at least in a general tone. The film has a nice feeling of grit and grime and blood and smoke, all presented in a loud and transgressive in-your-face style. Onslaught is very clear from the start as to what kind of movie it wants to be.

It's these various elements and attitudes that keep this film fun, and an overall good time at the movies, despite its eventually very obvious short comings.

Because the fact is, Onslaught just isn't all that transgressive. It's simply not as gory as you’d want it to be. And when it does splash some blood around, it’s a little too obscured, or the scene is too dark, or it happens off camera. And I gotta ask, why do that? What's the point? What audience are you serving? Who do you think is going to this film? This... hesitancy... to really let loose, when that is clearly the only proper way to treat a story like this, is a big part of what keeps the film from being great.

Well... that, and it weirdly loses gas in the 3rd act.

It always feels a little strange to say that a 90 minute film drags a bit, but that's definitely the problem here, especially during the big climatic trailer park fight, a scene that is weirdly paced, and seems to lack a lot of urgency, all while laboring under the fact that the geography of the entire fight is never clear. Each moment of action seems so untethered from the rest of the scene. How big is this trailer park? How many people live there? What's the map look like? We know who some of the park's residents are, but where they live in relation to each other? It's never clear. This general feeling isn't helped by the fact that there are so many weird pauses in the middle of the fight too. Basically, for a team of relentless super-soldier killers, once they reach the trailer park, they suddenly become very "not-very-relentless."

And that's the worst thing about the film. It starts out very promising, but by the end, what began as a homage to 80’s action/sci-fi/horrors ends up feeling more like a cheap retread, and all without bringing anything of its own to really leave a memorable mark on the genre. And this is on top of the fact that the story is over-stuffed with character development digressions that are either underdeveloped or end up leading nowhere. The link between The Butcher and Celeste is particularly pointless. I hate to say it, but the overwhelming feeling you're left with after seeing this film is that Adam Wingard is no John Carpenter.

I mean, Carpenter wrote a single throw-away line of background dialogue that then went on to inspire the creation of the entire cyberpunk genre...

So, that was disappointing.

More disappointing was having to see some idiot movie critics saying shit like... (dumb nerd voice pontificating) "if this had been made in the 1980s, like the film clearly wishes, the bad guys would’ve been Russian, but instead they're WW2 era Nazi who are being funded by the government" and they said this shit while trying to make the point that this decision was a reflection of our modern day "distrust" towards our country, as if the problem with this movie was "politics" getting in the way of a good time. This kind of shit is a sad and frankly aggrivating commentary on the failure that is our education system. What a dumb ass. "The opening credits seem to equate America with the authoritarian governments of the past," all said in this scandalized and condescending nerd voice. Read a book, you dipshit.

Anyway, Onslaught isn't totally what I wanted it to be, but it's still got some good stuff going on. I enjoyed watching it, and maybe some day, a few years from now, I'll rewatch it, probably in preparation for the third film, and when I do, I'm sure I will be freshly disappointed over how it was almost great, but wasn't. Still, the film looks good, Dan Stevens is a blast, Adria Arjona makes for a great action hero, and I really enjoyed how the film was generally about the harm that America’s legacy of white supremacy inflicts upon people living below the poverty line, the dangerous results of government money and private military contractors, and also, why rolling at work generally isn’t a good idea.

Onslaught is not a terrible film. It's not a good film either. It's mostly just not as good as you wish it'd be, which is disappointing, especially in light of how good The Guest was.

Meh.