Onslaught (2026)

Onslaught Review: Wingard's Desert Siege

Adam Wingard's Onslaught arrives with a tantalizing premise — genetically engineered super soldiers loose in the desert, an Army sniper mother fighting for her daughter — and a pedigree that demands attention. Wingard and longtime collaborator Simon Barrett have built a reputation on genre subversion (The Guest, You're Next), but their recent blockbuster work (Godzilla vs. Kong) showed a willingness to prioritize spectacle over the tight, nasty thrills that made their early films cult favorites. The question hanging over this R-rated, 92-minute action-horror hybrid is which version of Wingard shows up.

Direction & Tone

Wingard's command of geography and tension is evident in the early going. The desert setting isn't just backdrop; it's a character — blinding light, zero cover, heat that distorts both vision and judgment. The opening breakout sequence is efficient, brutal, and establishes the threat without exposition dumps. But as the film settles into its cat-and-mouse rhythm, the pacing develops a start-stop quality. Set pieces that should escalate instead repeat, and the horror elements — body horror, psychological dread — are introduced then abandoned in favor of conventional shootouts. Wingard's camera remains kinetic, but the editorial rhythm feels compromised, as if a tighter, meaner 85-minute cut exists somewhere.

Performances

Adria Arjona carries the film with a physical commitment that sells both the sniper's precision and the mother's desperation. She's not asked to do much beyond react and survive, but she grounds the absurdity. Dan Stevens and Rebecca Hall as the Kammler's bring unsettling charisma to roles that could've been one-note villains; their quiet menace outshines the more overt "Butcher" antagonist. Michael Biehn and Reginald VelJohnson provide welcome gravitas in supporting turns, though Eric Wareheim's comic-relief casting feels like a tonal miscalculation that never pays off. Alex Pereira's Butcher is physically imposing but functionally a force of nature rather than a character — effective, but not memorable.

Story & Pacing

The screenplay (Barrett and Wingard) sets up clean stakes and then struggles to complicate them. The "super soldier" mythology is teased but never satisfactorily explored — we get capabilities without consequences, rules without exceptions. The daughter element, central to the marketing, functions more as a ticking clock than a relationship. At 92 minutes, Onslaught doesn't overstay its welcome, but it also doesn't use its runtime to deepen the conflict. The third act pivots to a facility siege that feels borrowed from a different, less interesting movie. Practical effects work is solid; CGI augmentation less so.