Onslaught Review - Overlord Light

Have you seen the film Overlord and thought to yourself, you know, I really love this movie, but if it was like 50% less violent and about 80% less gross? Well, you're in luck, baby, because Onslaught is here to answer the call. That dude that directed the recent Godzilla V Kong movies is back, and he's bringing with him some old school style as he's getting back to his roots for this hour and a half R-rated chick with a dick action flick. And by dick, I mean a big gun. And she's going to be using that thing to take on some super soldier freaks that seem to be indestructible. So strap in and strap on as I give you a spoiler-free review for Onslaught. Onslaught is an interesting little minx. I knew nothing about it going in other than there was a poster with a chick with a gun and a little girl and a kind of like an eye patch thing. Her eye was being covered with a bandana, and I thought, I feel like I've seen this movie 500 times in the last couple years. A strong female lead, you know, taking care of business. She looks to be about 90 pounds, soaking wet, an absolute bombshell of an actress, kicking ass, taking names or maybe not taking names. Onslaught sets the stage very early, though, and lets the audience know this is not your typical paint-by-numbers crap. This is a very bizarre-ass movie with a counter that goes from, I don't know, like 12 hours down to action time. But that takes place within like the first 40 minutes of the film. It's not one of those dumb things where you're counting along until the movie's mercifully over. No, you're actually enjoying the counter getting down because that's when you know the action's gonna hit. What's disappointing for me is that once that counter does hit, that's when the movie goes to ----. I'm being dramatic on YouTube. I know, shocking to think that a creator would go over the top with things. It does get worse for me. I found the first half, much like the recent film Buddy, to be way stronger in the first 45 minutes. Adria Arhana plays Celeste. She's the badass female protagonist that kicks ass and just shoots anything that she thinks deems worthy of shooting. We're gonna start with her blowing up a bunch of pumpkins, as one does in the middle of the desert where she lives, in this kind of retirement community for losers. She's a soldier with PTSD, refreshing for a film I know, who's unable to move on in life. Well, she better get on it because she has a little daughter that's back in the picture, got dropped at her front doorstep because the husband needs to go out of town on a business trip. So she's left with this ******* child. What is she supposed to do with this dead weight? She gonna feed it? She gotta water it and put it to bed? She's gonna put it in the ground if she's not careful because while this plot's going on, we have another one with the military and they're building up, they're cooking up some freaking hybrid zombie super soldiers over there, like this is an episode of The X-Files. The only thing missing is Krychek, but instead of him, we have this weird dude. There's like three stories kind of moving around in tandem. You have the woman with the kid, Celeste, and then you have the experimental stuff going on with the army, and then you have this third individual who's a solo guy who for some reason is really into bondage, but we don't get to stay for that plot. That one doesn't last very long. We do get some tasteful boobs and ass shots though for a little bit of time, something to sprinkle in there, savor it, enjoy it while it's there, but he gets called into action and he's going to be part of the cleanup crew that's going along to these places where the super soldiers are at running amok and just kind of documenting stuff, making sure the mess is cleaned up and contained so that the super soldiers can be monitored as they go on their tear. Now the reason I say the story gets weak in this last act where it should be the most exciting stuff with all the, you know, the carnage and the slaughtering and whatnot is because Celeste is not that great of a character to follow. She's kind of an angry individual. She's built up as this badass soldier that's really good with guns. She's got all these guns in her house that she's never going to ******* use and she is not really doing anything of value or substance by the time this movie ends. Like she does so little in this film it's almost impressive how high they hype her up. Thankfully there's some random ass extra characters I was not expecting to see in this movie. Eric Wareheim's in this as a loser cop that lives next door. We got, uh, we got Sergeant Al Powell in the mix. Or maybe you know him as the other Sergeant Winslow from Family Matters. Yeah, Reginald Vell Johnson, he has, he has a role to play and he always knocks it out of the park. It was really nice seeing him. Last but not least, well maybe least in this one, we have Michael Bean who, you know, from Terminator and things of that ilk. He's in here too. He's kind of phoned it in though. I wasn't really into his role, which is a small one to be sure. But since this is a about super soldier zombie creations, we naturally have to have a German doctor. And that's where I kind of go back also to the other film I talked about, Overlord. I love Overlord. That movie is nasty. It's violent as all hell. It's really pushing that R rating. Here though, it gives us this tease of that's what we're going to get and then it just falls flat, I thought. Like really disappointed with where this movie ended up taking us. Mainly because it's always at night in the last act and I'm not huge on night scenes to begin with. It's just not as visually poppy and a lot of the times. And on top of that, there's just not a lot of creativity. It's your standard ---- like, oh the chick finds a chainsaw or this guy's got a big mallet. It's all been there, done that stuff. Now the stuff that does work are some of the crazy camera shots. I love when directors go nuts with the camera. Strapping it to the side of a truck. Seeing that wheel spinning around in the dirt. Mounting it to the top of a freaking gun as it's moving around like we're in a game of Call of Duty. Actually you know what? Speaking of Call of Duty, that's really the design that I'm getting from these super soldiers. These three hulking dudes. They look like skin packs you could unlock in one of the the battle passes. There is definitely gore in the movie. It's rated R. You're going to see some blood spraying up but I noticed a lot of directors seem to be using it as a crutch more than a creative choice nowadays. It's just blood for the sake of blood and seeing how much they can pump onto the actress. Which unfortunately now for me is the only way I can achieve climax. Oh I know what else I was going to say. The feel of this movie is another pro for sure and again it's a lot more noticeable in the first 45 minutes. Got a major John Carpenter vibe from this thing. The sounds. The synth style. The music's bombastic. It's hit and hard. It's hit and right. Even the text treatment in the introduction gave me that John Carpenter feel that I love. So props for you know kind of emulating that style a little bit but then again we got to bring it home. We got to bring it home and a lot of movies these days seem to have a very fun concept or a simple one and the execution is solid but they just cannot cross the finish line. Onslaught was entertaining enough. I think it's worthy of a watch. I don't necessarily think you need to see it in theaters though. This is one you could you could watch at home pretty comfortably and you're not going to miss much. The whole mother keeping her daughter safe shtick. It doesn't really land in this film either because again the mom is kind of a garbage person. She's not the most loving mother you think about when dealing with this kid. So I never really got that relationship. They felt estranged the whole time even when there is an attempt to make them bond. It falls kind of flat and I would say that's just an overall impression I get for the film. Very high highs but then it lands with a bit of a dud. Let me know your thoughts though. Did you think this was just fantastic from front to back? 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