ONSLAUGHT raises many troubling questions about our government, but none of them are new. In and of itself, this is not an insurmountable cinematic problem. Who doesn’t love a dive down the rabbit hole of Nazi scientists brought to America in order to conduct ethically problematic experiments? For that matter, who doesn’t love a good conspiracy theory extrapolated out into the fringes of credibility? Not this gal. Yet after a tantalizing start, Adam Wingard, he who gave us the rabbit mask horror meme, allows a promising start to devolve into first-person shooter exercise with nodding homages to Mad Max and the Texas Chainsaw franchises.
Darn. Just darn.
We start with a countdown (11 hours and change) to the tumultuous events that will provide the climax of the film, and with Celeste (Adria Arjona) practicing her sharpshooting skills on a row of jack-o-lanterns. It is early morning and the worst day of her life is off to a very bad start with the unexpected arrival of her ex (Jacob Scipio) and her pre-adolescent daughter, Daisy (Blake Kennedy). There is also the unexpected news that her ex is moving away and taking Daisy with him and there is nothing Celeste can do about it. What with her own demons from Army days in combat, and the residents of the trailer park she manages never quite being able to pay their rent on time, Celeste is already in a mother of a mood when things really begin to go south.
Meanwhile, once and future Nazi Dr. Kammler (Wingard stalwart Dan Stevens) is starting his day being romantic in BDSM way with his beloved wife Hanna (Rebecca Hall). She coos as he licks her toes and tells him he’s been a good boy. And so he has been, at least as far as the military-industrial complex is concerned. He is zeroing in on creating a squad of super soldiers from the remains of psychotic soldiers who were in no position to refuse the anatomical adjustments that let them control their hearts, manipulate their skin into bulletproof armor, and see in the dark. He also smokes while brain surgery is going in a few feet away just to let us all know how truly evil he is on every level.
Of course, things go awry. Not for lack of warning from Dr. Kammler, who tells the resident government agent (Michael Biehn) at his super-secret lab that it’s too soon to think about real world testing and is told in return that time’s up.
Up until now, we’ve had a perfectly enjoyable speculation about what our tax dollars may be getting up to without our knowledge. The writing is spare but pointed; the direction is sharp and stimulating; the acting accepts the assignment of being stylized satire. And then it loses its grip as it devolves into an inferior example of grindhouse. Not that there’s anything wrong with grindhouse as a genre, but bait-and-switch is bad-faith, and failing to commit is even worse.
There on the barren desert landscape an elite band of super soldiers who can feel neither pain nor emotion are pitted against a single mother who is not just dealing with PTSD, but is royally ticked-off at the kind of day she is having. The idea of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object comes to mind and, as a concept, it’s delightful. And if the execution had been tighter, less focused on gore and more on moving the story along, well we might have had something special.
Not even the introduction of Cyrus (Drew Starkey), fastidiously effete cleaner tasked with making the evidence of a spectacularly failed government program disappear can perk things up. As the boyish expert with specific entertainment tastes who may or may not be able to work around the recreational drugs he was consuming before being called into action, he is the acme of nihilism in a studiously casual suit and specifically angled blond coif. Far more compelling than the glowing eyes of the super soldiers, and obviously more dangerous because his considerable intellect is intact, drugs notwithstanding.
Kudos, though, to Arjona, who throws herself headfirst into a messy character who has surrendered to anger and chaos, but not to giving up on life entirely. She also looks suitably bad-ass handling heavy armaments, and terrifyingly maternal protecting Daisy from trailer park invaders. Kennedy credibly presents a child mature beyond her pre-teen years, who is respectful but dubious about her mom’s ability to navigate adulthood, but still child enough to instinctively listen to mama when the bullets start to fly. For the necessary comic relief, we have trailer park denizens Eric Wareheim as a bonsai-loving cop with questionable aptitude for his job, and Leon M. Brown as the aging Vietnam vet who doesn’t take Celeste’s guff but instead lobs it back at her in an exercise of paternal affection.
ONSLAUGHT does offer a novel definition of what exactly constitutes the concept of formal as it philosophizes about war as a principle of government control over its population (one is put in mind of Gore Vidal’s “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace) and the moral ambiguities resulting therefrom. Such a great and timely concept deserved a better outcome.
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