Onslaught

On temporary (?) hiatus from The MonsterVerse, director Adam Wingard (Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire) returns to the world of super soldiers with Onslaught, a fun homage to John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 that proves well-made pastiches can still deliver quality entertainment.

Doubling down on the violent, stylized action of his excellent The Guest, Wingard and longtime collaborator/co-writer Simon Barrett serve up another gritty and witty tale of gifted military operatives and their encounters with society.

Expediting the process this time is Dr. Hans Kammler (Dan Stevens, borderline unrecognizable), a human experimenter of Nazi lineage who's cooking up a new ultimate breed of field operatives at a top secret government lab in the U.S. desert. What could possibly go wrong?

In short, everything. And after a grisly test run with men led by Baylor (Michael Biehn), Kammler’s three perfect (in a zombified The Mountain from Game of Thrones sort of way) assassins are let loose on civilization.

A crowded gas station may offer little resistance but that's not the case with the Windy Oasis trailer park, whose residents include former Army sniper Celeste (Adria Arjona, Hit Man) — extra incentivized by the surprise drop-off of her preteen daughter Daisy (Blake Kennedy) — fellow veteran Josiah (Reginald “Carl Winslow” VelJohnson), and inept local cop Kovacks (Eric Wareheim).

Their showdowns occasionally defy the invaders’ omnipotent nature for the sake of the “regular” humans surviving a bit longer and keeping Onslaught from being a short film, but these visceral, well-lit action sequences are so expertly staged that some logic-fudging is acceptable.

A few steps behind these antics is investigating agent Cyrus (Drew Starkey, Outer Banks), who offers some of the film’s funniest moments merely through physical humor. As with Kammler's wife Hanna (Rebecca Hall), there’s a sense Cyrus is underwritten on purpose to play a larger role in the sequel (if one indeed happens), though he nevertheless makes an impression via minimal screen time.

The end result may not be quite on The Guest’s level, but as with Wingard’s best genre fare — no, the lousy You’re Next doesn’t even qualify — it blends enough original thought and nods to the greats to work marvelously.

Grade: B-plus. Rated R. Now playing at Carolina Cinemark and Regal Biltmore Grande.

(Photo: A24)