Traditionally, Labor Day weekend is not the busiest time of year for movie theaters. With the summer movie schedule in the rearview mirror and awards season gearing up for the fall, Labor Day can be a bit of a lull on the calendar, but there are still new releases opening, hoping to make a splash with audiences. This year, director Adam Wingard is back with the action slasher vehicle Onslaught, which stars Andor standout Adria Arjona as a military sniper who tries to protect her family from attacking super soldiers. Onslaught is a spiritual successor to Wingard’s previous film The Guest, taking place in the same continuity. Twelve years after its release, The Guest remains Wingard’s highest-rated project on Rotten Tomatoes, but Onslaught turned out quite well itself.
As of this writing, Onslaught has a critics score of 73% on Rotten Tomatoes with 26 reviews counted. That’s the highest mark for a Wingard-directed feature since 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, which posted a 75% Certified Fresh score. Onslaught is seen as a marked improvement from Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which was hit with a rotten 54% score.
No Critics Consensus for Onslaught has been added to Rotten Tomatoes at this time, but skimming over the published reviews gives people a good idea of the pros and cons. On the positive side of the spectrum, most are in agreement that Onslaught is a fun ride, primarily fueled by well-crafted action set pieces that make the most of Arjona’s talents. It’s also a case of “all killer, no filler” thanks to its 90-minute run time that keeps the pace moving. While some critics are very high on the movie, even many of the positive reviews admit Onslaught offers little more than just genre thrills. It goes for something a little deeper with subtext about the military, but that aspect isn’t fully fleshed out.
The negative reviews mainly share the sentiment of Onslaught failing to live up to its potential by being less than the sum of its parts. Some of the rotten reviews on Rotten Tomatoes still take time to highlight the action sequences and Wingard’s technical filmmaking prowess, but those critics feel the overall product is lacking — particularly in the story department, where Onslaught struggles to maintain forward momentum. It is worth pointing out that there are only seven negative Onslaught reviews right now (compared to 19 positive), but the average rating is 6.4/10, so even the positive reviews aren’t overwhelmingly enthusiastic.
Granted, 26 reviews is a very small sample size, even for a movie on the scale of Onslaught. As a point of comparison, The Guest has 120 reviews counted on Rotten Tomatoes, so there likely will be more Onslaught reviews that come in over the next couple of days. That could cause the score to fluctuate a bit, perhaps pushing Onslaught past Godzilla vs. Kong at the end of the day. It’ll be interesting to see what happens on that front, but any shifts in Rotten Tomatoes score shouldn’t be too drastic. Typically, the first wave of reviews is indicative of where the general consensus will land, so odds are, Onslaught will go down as a fun action romp that falls short of greatness.
Ideally, the generally positive reviews will help Onslaught‘s box office prospects. Obviously, the film won’t be as big as a Godzilla vs. Kong movie, but it could make a decent dent thanks to the word of mouth. Summer holdovers Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey continue to be huge draws several weeks into their runs, but Onslaught could appeal to a demographic that’s in the mood for a throwback action picture.
