After a decade of studio blockbusters shot overseas for tax breaks, Adam Wingard went back to New Mexico to make the kind of movie he started out making.
‘Onslaught’ is an action horror movie that follows an army sniper as she struggles to protect her young daughter from an army of genetically engineered super soldiers who escaped from a secret military facility.
Previously, Wingard directed movies like ‘You’re Next’ (2011), ‘The Guest’ (2014), ‘Blair Witch’ (2016), ‘Death Note’ (2017), ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ (2021), and ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’ (2024).
‘Onslaught’ marks a return to the genre for the director. and he said in a letter titled “Inauspicious Surroundings” that it has helped him regain his identity. It’s a way back to the kind of movies he loves, “Even if my version of personal includes a bunch of super soldiers shooting up a trailer park!”
Wingard laid all this out in a letter to A24 members promoting the film’s release. He wrote about the film’s temporary production office in a semi-condemned building in Albuquerque, a place his line producer David Kern said smelled like a latrine, where the crew held daily meetings in a “war room” walled with location photos from production designer Tom Hammock.
He and director of photography Oren Soffer built a vision board there, a collage of film stills representing every aesthetic influence behind the movie. “This is just as much a movie about movies, so this collage was especially important,” he wrote.
For the last decade Wingard has shot outside the U.S. for tax-credit reasons, so making what he calls a “VERY American film” on American soil felt poignant to him.
‘Onslaught’ stars Adria Arjona, Dan Stevens, Eric Wareheim, Reginald VelJohnson, Michael Biehn, Alex Pereira, Drew Starkey, and Rebecca Hall.
It’s in theaters Sept. 4.
