Onslaught

3 outta 5

Onslaught is a horror siege gore action film that tries to say something about veterans and PTSD. This may have good intentions but clashes harshly with undead chainsaw wielding zombies like something out of Evil Dead. There’s also introspection from an isolated and hard-drinking single mother who has difficulty dealing with her ex and relating to her daughter. But then all this emotional pathos gets tossed when she has to fight a zombie who was made from a soldier she confronted in her past. There’s nothing wrong with crazy and gory, but it clangs against ruminations on traumatic emotional truth. But if one just wants a movie about chainsaw-wielding zombie military men, it does deliver.

Celeste (Adria Arjona) is a former military sniper and current downtrodden manager of a run-down trailer park. She also had her kid, Daisy (Blake Kennedy), unexpectedly dropped on her by her ex. She is trying to collect rent from the various wacky folks in her trailer park. She is friendly with Josiah (Reginald VelJohnson), like her is a military veteran. More of a pain is Kovacks (Eric Wareheim), a police officer who is yelling at his neighbours and dodges paying rent. Meanwhile, across town a secretive laboratory run by Nazi scientist Hans (Dan Stevens) is reanimating dead soldiers and making them crazy super-soldier killers. The undead soldiers eventually escape, kill a bunch of folks at a gas station, and then descend upon Celeste’s trailer park. Now the former sniper has to find her ability to kill again to save her park and he daughter.

The movie’s concept is inherently crazy, which doesn’t work well serious stuff about veterans and PTSD. It slightly works that the military members are just being used and discarded. One of the zombie military bad guys was another soldier Celeste fought while serving in the military. It is absurd that this guy she had a history with turns out to be the head zombie military man she is fighting for her life with. But this is all absurd.

Stevens as the Nazi scientist who rocks his earbuds while he is making zombie military soldiers is very weird. His first scene involves him crawling along the floor and licking the feet of his lover, Hannah (Rebecca Hall) and she sends him off on his day job of making undead Nazi military soldiers. Everything he says sound weird and he even has a bum eye to make him look stranger. Hans is demonstrating his Nazi military men to the government agent, Baylor (Michael Biehn). It is cool to see Biehn again and he get a good moment when he thinks the zombies have failed and they pop back up. Stevens’ Hans seems like the main bad guy and is then unceremoniously bumped off after 30 minutes.

Hall as the wife gets to deliver some evil lines evilly about how these super-soldiers have been designed to kill civilians and be insurmountable threats. Sent in to clean up the mess is Cyrus (Drew Starkey), who is introduced at a S&M fetish club which adds nothing but just letting the film show off some nudity and S&M gear. He is supposed to be a super-efficient cleaner but he’s also working off some excessive drugs that he imbibed in at the S&M club. After the zombie military men kill a bunch of people at a gas station, Cyrus shows up with a cleanup crew, gives a dirty look when he stumbles in a pool of blood and starts killing any survivors. But this guy never confronts the zombie folks so, ultimately, his plot is superfluous.

Arjona shows a lot of layers of a former soldier dealing with PTSD and how she has trouble relating to her kid. When someone points out that she lost an eye battling zombies she says succinctly, “Don’t worry, I have another one”. There’s also a heartfelt serious moment of the mom trying to explain something scary to her daughter when she gets injured so the little girl won’t freak out. Wareheim as the annoying trailer park guy is a very big jerk but he is able to stand up and fight when the moment calls for it. VelJohnson as Josiah is the lovable and badass old guy and he shoots one of the zombies at the right moment and yells heroically, “You messed with the wrong trailer park, Mutha$%@!!”

When Onslaught just focuses on action and gore, it is dark, intense and messy. When the super-soldiers attack the gas station it is a scene of total carnage. Does it make sense that one of the super-soldiers is wielding a chainsaw? No, but it looks evil and badass. There’s also a great bit when that guy gets wrecked by his own chainsaw that is really gross. The super-soldiers are actually very intimidating and look freaky, they’re silent and very deadly. It gets so over the top with crazy gore it gets ridiculous. The emotional bits with military mom crashes badly with the monster stuff, but when Onslaught delivers splatter it is disgustingly entertaining.