(trailer review) - Onslaught

This feels like one of those films that could easily get overlooked. The trailer has a slightly generic setup on paper, there isn’t exactly a huge A-list star front and centre, and I can already see some people dismissing it before giving it a chance. Besides, the name does not help. But honestly? I think this looks really good.

For a good portion of the trailer, I was trying to work out where I recognised the lead actress from. It was bugging me the entire time until her name popped up at the end and it finally clicked. Then I spotted Reginald VelJohnson and thought, "Wait... what?"

But the name that completely caught me off guard was Michael Biehn. Let me catch you up to who this is.

The moment someone in the trailer says they were trying to create the ideal combatant, my brain immediately went to Universal Soldier with Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lungdren. I used to have that recorded off cable TV on VHS and watched it countless times. If memory serves, those soldiers were enhanced more through cybernetics and experimentation than outright robotics like an cyborg, but that's the first thing that came to mind watching the trailer.

The other movie this reminded me of has a guy who was sent back in time to protect a woman from a cyborg because she would eventually give birth to his son, John Connor. Yep, The Terminator.

So seeing his name attached to a film involving engineered super soldiers and or cyborgs/killing machines felt strangely fitting.

The overall vibe gave me a mixture of both those films. It feels more Universal Soldier because of the military backdrop, but there's definitely a little bit of The Terminator DNA in there too. At the same time, it has that slightly rough-around-the-edges B-movie energy that I actually quite enjoy, and considering it's coming from A24, that immediately raises my interest level.

The trailer introduces us to a former soldier who appears to be living a quiet life whilst dealing with the lingering effects of PTSD. She's isolated, keeps to herself and is raising her daughter alone, but things start to unravel when she notices a pattern of military helicopters repeatedly flying over the area where she lives. Convinced something isn't right, she begins digging deeper.

That's when we hear the line, "What you're looking at is the human equivalent of a heat-seeking missile. The perfect soldier." And from there, the trailer kicks into gear.

We get glimpses of a heavily enhanced soldier with pale, almost glowing pupils tearing through people with brutal efficiency. There's a knife attack, gunfire, bodies dropping and the sense that whatever experiment was created has gone very, very wrong.

Then we're introduced to another operative, seemingly brought in to contain the situation and clean up the mess before it becomes public knowledge.

We are then reintroduced to the lead where she's forced into the conflict when the violence starts spilling into her world. From that point onwards, her focus becomes survival and protecting her daughter at all costs.

The story itself doesn't look particularly groundbreaking, but the execution looks strong. The action appears solid, the atmosphere works, and there's enough mystery surrounding these soldiers to keep me interested.

Could it end up being another generic military sci-fi action film? Absolutely. But based on this trailer, I think there's a decent chance it's something better than that. And sometimes, that's all a trailer needs to do. Make you want to find out more.