Wingard also gets points for the sound design and the soundtrack. Onslaught absolutely bludgeons the audience with loud sounds for ordinary moments like a door closing. Some of the best jump-scares in the film are the exaggerated sonic gut-punches over nothing at all, and that is hilarious. Matthew Pusti’s soundtrack is perfect, as are the songs that drive the action forward. From an audio point of view, it all wins. The editing, too, gets high praise, there are intercut images of fascist violence that flash by so quickly they look like old examples of subliminal advertising.
It would be remiss not to mention the leather. The baddies love them some BDSM, and it’s a fun note in the film. Kammler, for all his Hannibal Lechter-esque psychopathy, is made to crawl to his wife and lick her very expensive, very sharp shoes. When Cyrus is activated to clean up the mess, he is interrupted in what can only be described as a dark sex ritual involving a dominatrix at an altar. Who are we to judge? It sets the tone.
“… This is top notch work, for what it is, and bloody good fun …”
So, with all that quality production, social consciousness, and raging nostalgia, how does it fall short? Well, it’s a copy of a copy. Carpenter wasn’t trying to make campy movies, he was just a filmmaker doing the best he could with what he had. His were never well-financed films. The result is a unique genre he invented and owns. Onslaught is an intentional and often inelegant aping of that style. At some point the casting and script become a collection of trope mad-libs.
Don’t get me wrong: Wingard has made an amazingly adept pastiche of these potent elements. This is top notch work, for what it is, and bloody good fun. I suspect it will do well at the box office. I will see it again. Enjoy it for what it is, and forgive it for what it is not.
"…an adept pastiche of potent nostalgic elements. "
