Onslaught Is The Spiritual Sequel To The Guest We’ve All Been Waiting For
Similar super soldiers, different setting.
Not everything Adam Wingard directs can be a stealthy sequel to The Guest, but fans have been not-so-quietly hoping for a follow-up to the director’s 2014 thriller all the same. Their enthusiasm is warranted: Wingard created an instant cult classic by casting Dan Stevens as an unstoppable murdering machine, using elements of government conspiracy and psychological tension to elevate a simple home invasion premise. The films he’s made since have banked on increasingly heightened extremes, from Netflix’s maligned Death Note remake to Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla x Kong. But after over a decade on that trajectory, Wingard is finally circling back to the eerie, grounded vibes that made The Guest so intoxicating.
Onslaught is not a direct sequel to The Guest — at least, according to Dan Stevens, who reunites with Wingard for a third time in the film. But its status as a spiritual sequel cannot be ignored, as it’s technically building on the same theme of super soldiers unleashed... this time with even more devastating effects.
Where The Guest follows one charismatic stranger as he goes Terminator on an average family, Onslaught will sic a small army of brainwashed combatants on the unsuspecting populace. The government syndicate has created “the human equivalent of a heat-seeking missile” half a dozen times over; now, this shady group (led by a spook played by Godzilla x Kong’s Rebecca Hall) is testing it on the civilians of an unnamed desert town.
There’s no telling what role Stevens will play in this chaos, or if he’s just hiding the possibility that this is an actual Onslaught sequel and not just a spiritual one (fans are already abuzz over this theory). But Onslaught on the whole really belongs to Andor star Adria Arjona. Here, she plays a retired Army sniper running from her past and struggling to stay in the present for her young daughter. But her expertise will come in handy when this squad of enhanced soldiers descends on the trailer park she calls home.
It’s here that Wingard seems to be calling on zanier influences: it’s impossible not to think of Evil Dead or Escape from New York when Arjona’s heroine, bloodied and maybe missing an eye, whips out a chainsaw to even the playing field. That heightened violence will clash spectacularly with the chilly conspiracy bubbling beneath the surface, which should make this mash-up another must-see.
