Adam Wingard's new grindhouse action thriller "Onslaught" is a hyper-violent throwback that doubles as pointed political commentary, according to this review. The film, a covert sequel to Wingard's 2014 cult favourite "The Guest", blends the DNA of "Terminator" and "Kill Bill" with a horror sensibility reminiscent of John Carpenter, while using its premise of militarised violence turned inward to reflect on America's "Imperial Boomerang" — the theory that tactics developed for foreign warfare eventually get turned on a nation's own citizens.

The story follows Celeste (Adria Arjona), a former military sniper with PTSD who manages a remote New Mexico trailer park, whose already difficult night — looking after her young daughter while low on supplies and surrounded by illegal firearms — is upended when three genetically enhanced super-soldiers escape a nearby secret military facility. Dan Stevens plays the scientist responsible for creating the soldiers, with Michael Biehn as a government operative overseeing them, and the resulting chaos forces Celeste into a bloody confrontation. The reviewer frames the film's violence as deliberately provocative, drawing an explicit link to real-world concerns about the militarisation of domestic law enforcement, such as reports that a significant proportion of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel are military veterans.