"Onslaught" review — Self-indulgent action throwback never really satisfies
“Momma needs to get her guns.” If I paid full-price admission to see Adam Wingard’s Onslaught , a very self-conscious and self-indulgent throwback genre exploitation riff, I would have been sorely disappointed. The film barely functions beyond being an explosive sensory overload, while still often underutilizing its propensity for extreme and merciless violence. No character ever really gets their chance to shine, either as a compellingly written human being or as a “rule-of-cool,” style-points-only action archetype, as the film reaches for entirely undeserved pathos. No plotline comes to a satisfying conclusion, even somehow defying the most basic conventions of plot structure, making its narrative choices laughably underwhelming. It’s almost baffling just how incoherent the film is, wanting to be too many things at once, while never really being any of them. But seeing this on a whim to capitalize on five-dollar ticket weekend at my local multiplex meant that I was in the prime heads...
