‘Onslaught’ Director on Kink, ICE Agents and Making Godzilla

Adam Wingard‘s new movie “Onslaught,” in theaters Friday via A24, is an ’80s-inspired action thriller in which a combat veteran (Adria Arjona) has to save her daughter (Blake Kennedy) when their trailer park is attacked by a trio of government-enhanced super soldiers. It’s a lean, mean throwback to the golden age of Cannon Films mayhem, and Wingard only has one regret.

“I think the one thing I would probably do is add even more graphic violence,” he says.

Given the ways the desert locals are treated as cannon fodder, it’s a wild request. But Wingard marvels at the amount of freedom A24 gave him for his R-rated siege tale.

“It’s actually a relatively restrained film in terms of what you see,” he says. “There are a couple of moments of blood that are usually over the top, so that it’s not disturbing. There’s a lot of disturbing violence, but it’s usually not too gratuitous. I was really surprised … like the truck stop massacre sequence. I thought for sure we were going to get pushed back. I even expected A24 to push back on it, but we never had to censor anything in the film. I don’t know why that is necessarily. It might be a tonal thing, because the movie can tightrope walk fun and disturbing violence, but it’s not torturous.”

The freedom to create his own world was a homecoming for Wingard, who made a name for himself directing a pair of indie hits: the 2011 darkly comedic slasher “You’re Next” and 2014’s down-and-dirty actioner “The Guest.” He used that momentum to tackle a pair of adaptations (2016’s “Blair Witch” and 2017’s “Death Note”), and then dove headfirst into megawatt blockbusters, helming 2021’s “Godzilla vs. Kong” and 2024’s “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.”

“After having spent a decade slaving away in the studio system and having reached this peak of what I was reaching for in my career with the last two ‘Godzilla’ movies, I felt like I’ve been waiting to get to this point where I can write my own ticket and get back to doing the types of films I think most represent me as a filmmaker,” Wingard says. “I knew the first chance I got, I thought I really want to do something that is almost capping a trilogy with ‘You’re Next’ and ‘The Guest.’”

Although he has mentioned that “The Guest,” which stars Dan Stevens as a mysterious and violent soldier, and “Onslaught” exist in the same universe, Wingard sees an overarching theme running between the three projects, all of which have screenplays by his frequent collaborator Simon Barrett.

“In a lot of ways, this film encapsulates both of those styles of movies,” he says. “‘You’re Next’ is essentially a siege movie that takes place mostly in one night, and ‘The Guest’ is much more a take on ‘Terminator,’ ‘Halloween,’ slasher films. We started looking at how to create a completion to a loose trilogy.”

Additionally, Wingard became a father before developing the “Onslaught” story with Barrett, and it inspired a parenting throughline in the work.

“My partner got pregnant while I was doing the last ‘Godzilla’ film,” Wingard says. “I was suddenly a dad, and this was a shocking new world for me. I also knew that the next film I was going to do was going to be something about a parent learning to be a parent. Knowing that really helped ground this wacky ’80s gonzo aesthetic, because I knew, ‘OK, I had this emotional anchor, and now I can go out and do all this crazy stuff, and we can tie it in to the worlds that we’ve already created.’”

One gonzo element that will have audiences talking is a very kinky relationship between Stevens, who is nearly unrecognizable in a wig and makeup as an elderly German scientist, and Rebecca Hall as his dom. It’s a wonderfully quirky and kinky side plot that Wingard was thrilled to include.

“Dan read the role, and this is our third collaboration together,” Wingard says. “The only note he had about this evil scientist character was, ‘I just feel like there’s something missing about him. He should be submissive to his wife in some sort of way.’ I said, ‘Oh, OK, I know what to do with this scene now.’ Suddenly, a lot of things changed in the movie after that, because I realized that we were making this film about not just surviving at a trailer park and being a parent, but it’s summarized by Michael Biehn’s line, ‘Let’s see what your pervert squad can do.’ These guys are the pervert squad, and we’re going to get in there; we’re going to learn about that Illuminati pervert squad.”

From parenting to kink, there’s plenty brewing beneath the surface of “Onslaught.” Many filmgoers will also consider modern warfare, from the rise of unmanned drone strikes to the perceived AI arms race that politicians swear America could lose to its enemies. Even though Wingard didn’t intend for the film to feel so timely, he does say these issues are definitely simmering, starting with the basic conceit of the story.

“By the time the movie’s done, you’re making something that was current a couple of years ago,” he says. “We knew we wanted to tell a story about PTSD, and there’s a shorthand to doing that with military, because we all understand that military equals PTSD no matter what. When you’re in those kinds of environments, it creates that. But there’s all kinds of different PTSD. That’s just how we’re taking that concept and putting it in the film so that it makes sense. But I was really blown away because everything was instinctual, and a lot of this film really does carry a heightened version of what my real worldview is in a lot of ways, especially the underground mechanisms of the military-industrial complex and secret programs and all those kinds of things. Even the lineage of us bringing Nazi scientists over from Project Paperclip from World War Two. I mean, those are all things that I believe in and are real. So this was an exploration of all those things.”

Wingard also inadvertently presaged the rise of controversy over increased presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, which echoed the super soldiers of “Onslaught” a little too well.

“The whole situation with ICE … when we were making the movie, it really wasn’t what it became even six, seven months later,” he says. “I remember there were a couple of months where it was just nonstop ICE stuff. We were in post, and I remember one of the headlines: there’s this picture of four ICE agents. They’re all geared up with masks on, and they’re standing in front of some big vehicle with its lights backlighting them, and it’s a very dramatic shot. I thought, ‘Oh my God, this looks exactly like the shot of our killers standing in front of the truck in the movie.’ Horror movies always have to have a cultural significance for them to really work on some even subconscious level. We were just in the zone with the zeitgeist.”

Watch the trailer for “Onslaught” below.