Onslaught

Not sure why you'd want your film, in this case director Adam Wingard's Onslaught, to arrive plastered with the Albertus font, that white text on a black background so beloved of John Carpenter (the typeface also enjoyed a previous life as the basis for all signage in Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner television series). Presumably the decision is partly affectionate and partly to anticipate, even acknowledge an obvious stylistic debt to the work of that director. A shame then that, despite aping something of the high-contrast photography of Dean Cundey and Carpenter's trademark electronic score, all of this scraping replication is in service of a piece that treads water until the fifty minute mark then skips an entire second act to instantly arrive at an unsatisfying finale. Premised on an idea of invincible, fascist super-soldiers, Onslaught curtails any hope of excitement by denying its monsters either a voice, by which they might puzzle through their undeath or, really, any truly impressive kills to hang their hat on. Instead, they simply glower outside Adria Arjona's trailer. A shoot-out in a bright, uniformly lit supermarket instantly recalls a similar situation in Universal Soldier where Dolph Lundgren's ear collecting zombie screamed at baffled shoppers while his underlings rotted on the floor beneath him. There's nothing in Onslaught even remotely as entertaining. Similarly, if viewers truly value muteness in their muscled murderers then, while neither are perfect, both Project Wolf Hunting and In a Violent Nature are light years ahead of this would-be watchable The Guest spin-off.