Some movies seemingly exist just to realize one action sequence. Others orient around one must-see musical number. I presume Adam Wingard’s Onslaught only exists because director Adam Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett grew obsessed with silhouettes. Specifically, the silhouettes of Onslaught super-soldier adversaries, Cockroach, Crybaby, and The Butcher (Alex Pereira) all standing still in the distance of wide shots.

Occasionally, these silhouettes are striking-looking. However, Wingard and company go back to this visual well so many times that it quickly loses its impact. Plus, a handful of images can’t sustain an entire narrative movie. If this one Onslaught aspect dominated its creative team’s interest, it’d explain why the rest of the movie is so shrug-worthy.

Barrett and Wingard begin Onslaught with Army veteran protagonist Celeste (Adria Arjona) engaging on some target practice on some pumpkins. After the title card and opening credits, the shift focuses to the creator of that super-soldier trio, Dr. Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens). He’s introduced eating breakfast before crawling on the floor and smooching his wife’s, Hanna (Rebecca Hall), feet. Capturing this act in unblinking single takes accentuates Onslaught wanting audiences to recoil in “ewwwww” horror at this act.

Honestly, though, if “foot stuff” is the apex of a transgressive B-movies idea of “kinky,” then we’re in trouble. Kirsten Stewart chomping on one of Katy O’Brien’s toes in Love Lies Bleeding does circles around this Onslaught moment in terms of specificity and radiating character-centric personality. Right from the start, Onslaught establishes its surface-level approach to “wild” cinema and its excessively scattered narrative.

The latter element means Barrett’s script awkwardly oscillates between Kammler and company preparing their three super-soldiers (normal veterans medically enhanced to be the “perfect fighters”) for a demonstration and Celeste’s ordinary life. Her ex-husband has just shown up to her Shady Oasis trailer park home with their daughter, Daisy (Blake Kennedy). Celeste’s dynamic with her child is weirdly executed. Early dialogue between this woman and her ex (“it’s not my weekend”) makes it clear she sees this youngster on a semi-regular basis.

Yet Celeste and Daisy’s on-screen rapport is like the former character has never met her daughter or even a kid before. The incongruity between their behavior and how the script defines their relationship is distracting. However, the duo soon face bigger problems. Crybaby, Cockroach, and The Butcher have (shocker) gotten loose! These soldiers have begun realizing their purpose: operating as perfect fighting machines unleashing chaos on domestic civilians. These three individuals (who’re basically Bucky Barnes by way of Michael Myers) are now slaughtering everyone in sight. Their next target? Shady Oasis trailer park.

A germ of an interesting idea fuels Onslaught. This is a B-movie distillation of the imperial boomerang concept. In other words, what if all the American military horror inflicted on Palestinian, Iranian, and Vietnamese citizens (among many others) transpired at your local convenience store or trailer park? That idea’s execution, though, immediately fumbles the ball via cowardly opening credit details attributing dark American creations to Nazi’s infiltrating the government. Meanwhile, Hanna’s dialogue declaring “normal Americans won’t open fire on their own countrymen” (thus explaining the super-soldiers creation) is naïve considering we live in a world where George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, and Tamir Rice (among countless others) are no longer alive because of polite brutality.

Conceptually, Onslaught has some components to create a conversation-starter soaked in entertaining bad taste and grisly violence. However, Wingard and Barrett are too timid to fully embrace either madness or truly transgressive political subtext. The creative bashfulness informing the duo’s derivative Blair Witch (which was a retread of the vastly superior The Blair Witch Project) frustratingly returns here.

Worst of all, though, is that Onslaught just isn’t very entertaining to watch. Any hand-to-hand fight scenes emerge with minimal flair or notable choreography. Meanwhile, sequences involving the super-soldiers stalking trailer park residents aren’t especially scary. Lacking either evocative atmospherics or compellingly drawn characters means there’s nothing worth getting absorbed in. I’m a personal devotee to movies featuring chainsaw fights. However, even one of the Onslaught foes picking up a chainsaw didn’t make me excitedly squeal. Lengthy carnage-oriented stretches are flat rather than gasp- or squirm-inducing.

Barrett’s attempts at “quirkiness” with these individuals only works with Dan Stevens. This Downton Abbey veteran gives it his all as the kooky Dr. Hans Kammler. The old-age makeup effects on that Nazi scientist are quite solid. Plus, Stevens refuses to wink towards the camera with his committed work as this adversary. On the other side of the spectrum is Drew Starkey’s disposable character Cyrus. Uninspired gags centered on him recently ingesting a lot of drugs exclusively define this fellow. Worst of all, poor Adria Arjona is saddled with “quirky” profanity-riddled dialogue seemingly lifted from a Deadpool script.

At least Arjona provides Onslaught perfectly fine leading lady work. She and the always welcome Reginald VelJohnson (the latter playing another veteran living in the same trailer park) have the only believably human dynamic in the entire film. Meanwhile, Matt Pusti commendably realizes a John Carpenter-inspired score. His compositions carry a distinctive crackling, atonal sound that effectively suggest Onslaught’s world’s askew even before the super-soldiers get loose.

Save for some colors (like a geyser of bright red blood in the climax) looking mighty pretty on the big screen and the welcome presence of McGruff the Crime Dog’s “I’m Glad I’m Me” on the soundtrack, Onslaught is shockingly empty. It doesn’t even memorably shock or offend viewers who bask in its “madcap” mayhem. There’s simply nothing here, whether you’re looking for shallow fun or provocative B-movie cinema. Instead, it’s a hollow exercise prominently displaying conventional narrative beats (like creating a connection between Celeste and The Butcher) and limply realized violence. Realizing those silhouette-driven shots couldn’t have been worth putting audiences through Onslaught.  

Onslaught begins its rampage in theaters everywhere on September 4th.