My Thoughts on “Onslaught” (2026)

 

(This is the poster for Onslaught (2026).) 

 

 

 

Finally, I finally get to talk about this movie. If you read my Coyote vs. Acme review, you'll know that was the movie that I ended up seeing instead of this one in theaters last month. I didn't really plan on seeing Coyote vs. Acme at all. I wanted to see this movie 👇, it was the only movie I was interested in seeing in September. Even though Coyote vs. Acme was on my list of things to review, I had no real intention of actually seeing it in theaters. At least, not as my one movie ☝️ for September. Maybe as my second movie, but I wanted to see this first. But, I couldn't because it was already out of theaters by the time we had the money 💵 and the free time to actually go see a movie in theaters. This movie did so poorly at the box office, only grossing $3.5 million 💵 against a $15 million budget 💵 that it was pulled from theaters just barely a week after it was released. 

 

The way it works now in the theatrical exhibition business that if a movie isn't doing too good at the box office, if it isn't making any money 💵, then it won't stay in theaters for very long. It's theatrical run will be a lot shorter. But if a movie's doing well, then it will stay in theaters a lot longer. That's why The Odyssey (2026), Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and Coyote vs. Acme were all still playing in theaters in September, despite the fact that both The Odyssey (2026) and Spider-Man: Brand New Day came out in July and Coyote vs. Acme came out in August. But little ol' humble Onslaught (2026) only got to stay in theaters for less than a week because it made so little money 💵. Not enough people bought tickets and went to see to justify the theaters chains keeping it in circulation. So instead it's digital release was fast tracked to October 6, 2026, one day before the 3 year anniversary of the October 7 attack in Israel 🇮🇱 oddly enough. That release date is pretty significant given the themes of this movie. 

 

With nothing else to see, me and my grandma just decided to go see Coyote vs. Acme because it was the only movie that we could both agree on. There was no way I was going to go see Practical Magic 2 and there was no way she was going to go see Resident Evil (2026). It wasn't that good. I was frankly disappointed by it, given how much it was hyped in the weeks prior. That movie got glowing reviews from critics, and from fans (Looney Tunes fans and animation fans in general), people were touting it as one of the greatest movies of the year, and a real triumph. Frankly, I think most people were just saying that because they were happy that it got released after it had been shelved for about 2 or 3 years. People liked the movie for what it represented, rather than what it is. 

 

But, even the movie who did judge on its own merits and not based any of the real world stuff surrounding it (which was a lot more interesting than the movie itself) said it was good, and it was a well told story that respected the Looney Tunes and got what they are. But it just didn't do it for me. Nothing about that movie really spoke to me, and I think it's the most overhyped and overrated movie of the year. I have no desire to ever watch it again, unless I have to. Unless it's just playing on someone's TV or computer. But I have no friends and none of the adult family members watch that kind of stuff, or play it at birthday parties or holiday celebrations (they always play sports instead of movies), so that's not likely to ever happen. I know that's a hot take and a lot of people will disagree with it and say that I'm stupid or that I didn't get it, or that I hate the Looney Tunes, or that I don't like animation, I'm not sticking up for animation enough, or that I'm am a corporate shill (that I'm pro-corporation, or pro-Warner Bros., or whatever 🙄). 

 

People on the Internet 🛜 are not very tolerant of differing opinions especially if it's about something they love, and they will ostracize you and call you names and accuse you of this or not, if you don't 100% agree with them 😒. Maybe I'm guilty of this too, but if I see an opinion I don't agree with, I just click off and remove it from my watch history and Internet history 🛜, and never think about it again. I don't go and attack people, call them names, accuse them of this or that, and ostracize them, that's childish, that's childish behavior 😠! The fact that I have a Blu-Ray 💿 of the complete series of Duck Dodgers and I brought showed it off in a photo along with the Blu-Ray 💿 that I bought of We Bury the Dead 🧟‍♂️ and the Switch 1 remaster/port of Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 in the We Bury the Dead 🧟‍♂️ review, and I fully intend on reviewing Duck Dodgers in the future, should tell you that I do not hate the Looney Tunes. 

 

I have other Looney Tunes related media in my list as well like Looney Tunes: Back in Action, The Day the Earth Blew Up 🌎, Loonatics Unleashed, The Looney Tunes Show, New Looney Tunes AKA Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production 🐰 AKA Bugs! 🐰, and Looney Tunes Cartoons. Would I have added any of those if I didn't like the Looney Tunes? Liking or not liking Coyote vs. Acme shouldn't be a litmus test to see whether or not someone likes Looney Tunes or not. I didn't like one Looney Tunes movie ☝️, doesn't mean I hate them all, or that I hate the whole franchise. Grow up people, be more mature than that 😤! It's a lot more nuanced than that. 

 

I was pretty upset when I found out that Onslaught (2026) was no longer playing in theaters. I was angry 😡, I was crying 😭, I was hitting my bed 🛏️, I was banging my fist 👊 on my desk, I was opening my trash can all aggressively. I know that seems rather childish to get that worked up over a movie not playing in theaters, and I just said to "grow up" to people who think that if you hate Coyote vs. Acme than you hate all of Looney Tunes. Even I couldn't believe how upset I had gotten over that, but cut me some slack. I hadn't seen a movie in theaters since June, The Mandalorian and Grogu was the last theatrical released movie I saw before Coyote vs. Acme. I had missed out on two other movies ✌️ that I was interested in seeing in July and August. Motor City (2026), that action movie set in Detroit starring Alan Ritchson, and Mutiny (2026), the action movie set on a cargo ship starring Jason Statham. That was actually the second Jason Statham movie this year that I didn't get to see while it was still in theaters. 

 

The first one was Shelter (2026) back in January. I was hoping to see Mutiny (2026), both me and my grandma were looking forward to it, especially since it was directed by the same guy ♂︎ who directed Plane ✈️🇵🇭, that action movie starring Gerard Butler and Mike Colter, about a plane ✈️ that crashes in the Philippines 🇵🇭, and all the passengers are taken hostage by some Islamic terrorists ☪️. They don't specifically say that they're Islamic terrorists ☪️, it wasn't like Land of Bad 🇺🇸🇵🇭 where they were very specific about calling them Islamic terrorists ☪️. But come on, it's the southern part of the Philippines 🇵🇭, the part of the country where Islam ☪️ is the most practiced which has had the most Islamic terrorist activity ☪️. The Filipino branch of ISIS 🇵🇭, Abu Sayyaf is still present in those southern most islands, although their numbers have been greatly diminished. They only have 50 members as of 2025 according to the latest estimate by the Filipino military 🇵🇭 themselves, who may or may not be a reliable source of information. It's clear that they are Islamic terrorists ☪️. 

 

We both liked that movie and we both like Jason Statham movies, so we figured we'd also like Mutiny (2026). But alas, it was not meant to be, not that anything is meant to be. I don't believe in destiny or predeterminism. The only predeterminism I believe in is biological determinism, but that's only because it's based in science and not based in religion or spirituality, or anything like that. We missed out on that one too. I was hoping that this movie, Onslaught (2026) would be the one that we would actually get to see. So you can kind of understand why I was so heartbroken 💔 that the movie was no longer playing in theaters by the time I finally had the chance to see it. Speaking of We Bury the Dead 🧟‍♂️, that's another movie that I didn't get the chance to see while it was still in theaters and I saw recently on Blu-Ray 💿 (months after I had actually bought it), and has a connection to the MonsterVerse by way of one of its producers. Just as this movie has connection to the MonsterVerse by way of its director. Although this movie actually does feature two MonsterVerse actors, Dan Stevens and Rebecca Hall, who play the movie's main villains. The "real" villains of the movie. 

 

It was okay, I really didn't care for it. I liked it a little bit more than Coyote vs. Acme, but not by a whole lot. They both left me with a feeling of emptiness, of apathy. I got very little out of these two movies ✌️, and I don't really have much of a desire to watch either of them again. They're one timers for me, unless I'm in a situation where they're playing again. Then maybe I might consider watching them. Though We Bury the Dead 🧟‍♂️ is so obscure that I doubt anyone in America 🇺🇸, or even Australia 🇦🇺, the home country in which it was made, will actually willing watch it for fun. There's probably a whole bunch of people in America 🇺🇸 and Australia 🇦🇺 that don't even know that movie exists, let alone seen it. At least the movie I got to see in theaters after Coyote vs. Acme was a lot better.  

 

Beware Boiúna is a pretty good one, and pretty underrated given the pretty negative reviews it's gotten from critics so far. It's actually got mixed reviews, but still. From the few who have actually seen it and done reviews of it. I suspect that it will meet the same fate as this movie, and get pulled from the theaters since it doesn't seem like it's making a lot of money 💵. It's only made $823,157 💵 at the box office so far. It could make a lot more, but I don't really think that it will. And hardly anyone's talking about it. I haven't seen a single reviewer on YouTuber review this movie. Not a single one. None of the big reviewers are talking about it. Instead, they're talking about Verity, that horror drama thriller thing that I heard all the big reviewers describe as an "erotic thriller," even though it wasn't really marketed as one. It was more marketed as a horror movie, with Anne Hathaway as the villain and Dakota Johnson as the victim who's trying to escape from her, and has to try to stop her. Even though that's actually what the movie is and what it's about at all. 

 

That movie's gotten some pretty bad reviews so far, it's pretty much universally hated it seems from what I've seen on YouTube. But, it's still making a lot of movie because it's based on a book 📖 that's really popular with women ♀︎ (and queer people, especially gay ⚣, bi, and pan men ♂︎ as well as trans women ⚧, maybe?) by a really popular author, Colleen Hoover, and people are talking about it. These reviewers can make all the negative reviews they want, all they're doing is free advertising. Even if people won't go see the movie in good faith after watching one of these reviews, and they're just going to hate watch it, or watch it to make fun of it and laugh at it 🤣, they're still contributing to the movie's box office revenue. You're giving this bad movie that you hate money 💵, you're helping it succeed. So, this movie is that's making money 💵 in theaters right now and will probably outgross Beware Boiúna and force it to leave theaters a lot sooner than expected. So, go see it while you still can. If what I said here wasn't enough to convince you, read my review of it. 

 

Now before I get started, I should clarify that despite the movie being called Onslaught, it has nothing to do with the Transformers character, Onslaught from Transformers: The Last Knight. the one who was apart of Megatron's crew and used the same character model as Long Haul from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. They reused that character model a couple of times, they also used it in Transformers: Dark of the Moon 🌑, as one of the unnamed Decepticons who lands on Earth 🌎, in Washington DC, and takes the form of a dump truck. It might've been Long Haul, but I don't know. We didn't exactly see him die in Revenge of the Fallen, unless you count him being apart of Devastator, while also being separate 😕? That part kind of confuses me. 

 

How can Long Haul be apart of Devastator, if he's also participating in the battle inside the Egyptian village 🇪🇬? Did he also have a duplicate or a Decepticon counterpart like all the other Constructicons do? Onslaught is supposed to be a separate character, and he has almost the same exact character model as Long Haul. Just as Nitro Zeus has almost the same character model as Shockwave from Dark of the Moon 🌑. He gets killed by Drift, who straight up decapitates him and calls his head "fat." It also has nothing to do with the Marvel character also named Onslaught. This is an original movie that's about super soldiers. Which isn't a new concept, lots of movies have had super soldiers, including many Marvel movies (Marvel was where the term "super soldier" was popularized). 

 

The main reasons why I was so interested in watching this movie is that it was directed by Adam Wingard, who's kind of starting to look like Alan Moore now from how much he's grown his hair and his beard. Haven't you seen him in the interviews he did for this movie? He's almost unrecognizable from when he started doing the MonsterVerse movies, Godzilla vs. Kong and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Or even when he directed and starred in the first segment of V/H/S/2 📼, Phase I Clinical Trials. BTW, they just released a new V/H/S 📼 movie, V/H/S/Mixtape 📼 since they release those movies every other year. Though the last one, V/H/S/Halloween 🎃 came out the year prior, in 2025, so maybe they've switched to doing yearly releases instead. I'll have to review that one, as well as the other V/H/S 📼 movies. I know part of that is probably due to age, but I also think it's head hair and his facial hair. It makes him look completely different. I of course knew he wasn't going to direct the next MonsterVerse film after The New Empire, Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, and that Grant Sputore was going to take over, because he was committed to directing this movie and there were scheduling conflicts. 

 

But I wasn't sure what kind of movie this was going to be if it was going to be a straight up horror movie or if it was going to be an action movie. It was totally possible, A24 that started dipping their toes into more commercial friendly movies, including action films. Civil War 🇺🇸 (2024) and the following year's Warfare (2025) were the most actiony that the studio had gotten with any of their projects, but they were both still within A24's wheelhouse of movies, since they were both war movies (one about a fictional war and the other about a real one) and both had somewhat political messages. Civil War 🇺🇸 (2024) is obviously a lot more political than Warfare (2025) since it deals with a hypothetical second American civil war 🇺🇸 taking place in modern times, and it's supposed to be a commentary on how divided America 🇺🇸 is, as well as be a message about the importance of journalists and journalism. It's more trying to show how great journalists are, and how important they are, about also about commenting on political polarization in the United States 🇺🇸. 

 

But, it's not actually brave enough to actually go into the reasons why Americans 🇺🇸 are so polarized because they didn't want to offend anyone and risk losing any potential audience members. It's a very cowardly film, it felt very cowardly to me due its refusal to go all the way with its political message. Either go all the way with it, or don't it at all. But Warfare (2025) is about the Iraq War 🇮🇶 and that's always been a divisive topic, especially in American politics 🇺🇸, and there was some controversy and criticism towards the movie at the time of its release due to its depiction of the war. Some people felt that the movie portrayed the US 🇺🇸 too favorably, or didn't go out of its way to show them in a negative light, or showcase any of the bad things the Americans 🇺🇸 did during the war, and only focused on the battle it was depicting. Which was the Battle of Ramadi. War movies that only focus on battles (in other words, the action), do so because they want to avoid talking about politics. Even though wars are inherently political. War is politics through other means. Because the politics of a war are often very controversial and too scary, and filmmakers and studios never want to get into that most of the time because they don't want to risk losing any audience members who might be offended by the movie's political message. Alex Garland is very business savvy, he knows what will please an audience, and he knows a war movie that's too political will not please an audience. At least, not the kind of audience he's going for. 

 

So it was totally possible that this could've also been action movie, as well as being a horror movie. There was so little go off about this movie after it was announced in 2024 and was on A24's slate of movies in the next couple of years. But then the trailers dropped, and it turns out that this is an action horror film. It's both. Well actually, the trailers kind of made it look a lot more like an action film, and didn't really make it clear that it was also a horror film or had horror elements. And then I became a lot more interested in watching it than I was before. Which leads me to the other reason why I wanted to see this movie. It's because it's not a typical A24 movie. Most other A24 movies are esoteric, prestige arthouse movies made for film snobs, or so called "elevated horror" movies that have some kind of political or social message. Movies that seem far up their own asses about how smart, profound, groundbreaking, daring, bold, or important they are. The kinds of movies that only appeal the most snobbish of film snobs and stuffy film critics who have bad taste and look down on the rest of us. 

 

Even the two movies I mentioned before still had some of that same self importance because they were both war movies and they both had somewhat of a political message, though one of them is a lot more political than the other. This movie has a political message too, kind of, but it goes about it in a different way than a lot of A24 movies typically do, and it's under no illusions about what it actually is. It's just a fun action horror slasher movie about a trio of escaped super soldiers terrorizing a trailer park in the middle of the desert 🏜️, and this traumatized war veteran trying to protect her daughter from them and stop them. It's pure camp. It's the most pulpy of any A24 movie that I'm aware, besides maybe, Y2K (2024), that terrible horror comedy film that explores what would've happened if the Y2K apocalypse had happened for real. Any A24 movie that can go against the grain, and isn't some overly pretentious piece of trash that only exists to appeal to critics and film snobs should be supporting. 

 

I also liked the concept of it, that it was about these super soldiers who on the loose and were going on a killing spree. It reminded a lot more of the movies, Universal Soldier (1992) and Soldier (1998). It reminded me of Universal Soldier (1992) because of the concept of the US military 🇺🇸 secretly developing super soldiers, specifically the concept of taking dead or presumed dead soldiers and converting them into super soldiers. If you had told me that this started life as a proposed Universal Soldier spinoff movie, just as Rebel Moon started life as a proposed Star Wars spinoff movie, I would believe you. This movie, if anything else, shows that you can take the concept of Universal Soldier, and make a pretty decent slasher movie out of it. It reminded me of Soldier (1998) because of the concept of a regular human going up against a super soldier or a group of super soldiers, and ultimately prevailing against them. If the main character of this movie, Celeste Cross was stoic and barely talked, then it would be even more like Soldier (1998). 

 

Even though this movie did finally come out on digital, on its intended release date, I wasn't able to see it right away. Not only because I was busy with other stuff, but also because the movie had to be purchased separately and couldn't be streamed for free. Even though my aunt was the the one who told me that the movie was coming out on digital in October, she didn't buy for it for me. I ended up having to buy it using one of the debit cards 💳 in the account that we set up at Wells Fargo after we got the settlement money 💵 from my dad's lawsuit. Or before we got the money 💵, my aunt technically set up the account before we actually got the money 💵, and then we started putting some of it in that account. She has the money 💵 spread out over multiple accounts. Because it's a lot. I won't say how much, but it's a lot. I had pay for it using the Wells Fargo card 💳. It was only $24.99 💵, so it wasn't a big deal. 

 

I'm glad I finally watched it because it was pretty good 🙂. It's a lot better than most of the reviews made it seem. I certainly liked it a lot more than either Coyote vs. Acme or We Bury the Dead 🧟‍♂️. I'm not sure if I like it just as much Beware Boiúna or more, or less 🤔. It's kind of a toss up for me, and I can't really decide. It’s not as good as The Furious (2025), The Furious (2025) is still a lot better. Even if I wasn’t exactly in the right headspace when I saw it, I still think it’s the best movie of the year that I’ve seen. That movie is a pure action movie whereas this is an action horror blend, with it leaning a lot more into the horror than I was expecting. It's funny because before I saw this movie, I thought it and The Furious (2025) would make for a good pairing, and I still do. 

 

You know, The Furious (2025) is the perfect Father's Day movie since it's about a father trying to get his daughter back from these human traffickers, and Onslaught (2026) is the perfect Mother's Day movie since it's about a mother trying to protect her daughter from these super soldiers who attacked this trailer park community that she lives in. It's also the perfect Halloween movie 🎃 since it takes place on Halloween 🎃, or some time before or after Halloween 🎃. Celeste is shooting Jack o' Lanterns 🎃 at the beginning of the movie for target practice, and the movie was released the month before October, the month Halloween 🎃 takes place. It's clearly a Halloween movie 🎃. Hey, if Cowboy Bebop: The Movie counts as a Halloween movie 🎃 than this does too. 

 

After watching this movie, it's perfectly understandable why Adam Wingard chose to direct this movie instead of jumping right into directing the next MonsterVerse movie after The New Empire. Even though he clearly had ideas on what he wanted to do for the next movie after The New Empire, wanting to do a Godzilla centric movie after doing two Kong centric movies. After doing two big budget blockbusters almost back-to-back, it's understandably would want to do a smaller scale movie, a human  scale movie if you will, after doing two kaiju scale movies. Or should I say Titan scale movies 😏? Since the kaiju in the MonsterVerse are called Titans. You know, for a change of pace. To sort of recoup and recharge his batteries 🔋 after making such big movies so close to each other. It felt a lot more like an A24 movie than I was expecting it to feel. Going into it, I thought it was going to be a movie complete unlike what A24 usually put out. Like, I thought it was going to feel like any other movie that had the A24 logo slapped on it. But, that’s not really the case. 

 

It still feels like an A24 movie. Or at least kind of. It’s weird, it both feels like an A24 movie but it also doesn’t. The aspects of the movie that make it feel like an A24 movie are mainly in the cinematography and the editing, while the aspects that make it not feel like an A24 movie are the plot and the characters, and really the second half. The parts that feel the most like an A24 movie are involving the regular human bad guys that aren’t the super soldiers, like Hans Kammler, the evil German mad scientist 🇩🇪👨‍🔬 who created the super soldiers, has a receding hairline with white hair, has different colored eyes, and wears a cape. Adam Wingard wouldn’t shut up about that cape during interviews related to this movie, that’s pretty all he talked about in relation to this character. 

 

The backstory of this character of course is that he’s an third generation Operation Paperclip 📎, the controversial program in which the US government 🇺🇸 brought in a bunch of German scientists 🇩🇪👨‍🔬, mainly of whom had worked for the Nazi German government and had been accused of war crimes, gave them safe haven in the US 🇺🇸, protected them from prosecution (ensuring they’d never face any justice for any of the war crimes and crimes against humanity they were accused of during World War II and the Holocaust), in exchange for their expertise. This was the Cold War after all, and the Americans 🇺🇸 understandably wanted as much of an advantage over the Soviets ☭ as they could. Though it should be noted that the Soviets ☭ also took in some German scientists 🇩🇪👨‍🔬 of their own to come work for them, though their methods of doing were a lot more forceful. 

 

The German scientists 🇩🇪👨‍🔬 who worked for the Soviets ☭ pretty much had guns to their head. The deal the Americans 🇺🇸 made with these German scientists 🇩🇪👨‍🔬, many of whom were again, Nazi war criminals, is that as they worked for them, and didn’t work for the Soviets ☭, they would protect them from any war crimes prosecution. A lot of German scientists 🇩🇪👨‍🔬 who were brought over to the US 🇺🇸 through Operation Paperclip 📎 worked on the space program, and instrumental in getting Americans 🇺🇸 to the Moon 🌕. This is why there were so many German scientists 🇩🇪👨‍🔬 in the US 🇺🇸, and why there’s this stereotype of the German mad scientist 🇩🇪👨‍🔬. Almost every time you see a mad scientist 👨‍🔬 in a Hollywood movie, they’re almost always German 🇩🇪, or German coded 🇩🇪. 

 

Of course, Dr. Kammler’s backstory specifically is that he was banned from Europe after being charged by the European Court of Human Rights for crimes against humanity, likely due to illegal human experiments, and is being protected by the US 🇺🇸 from any international prosecution and standing trial, in exchange for his expertise and research. Sounds about right, especially for the current administration in power. Protecting war criminals and human rights abusers, while also committing several war crimes and human rights abuses themselves. The US 🇺🇸 has no obligation to hand anyone over who has an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court ⚖️ (ICC ⚖️). Though many war criminals, human rights abusers, disgraced former dictators, and just criminals in general still mostly choose to hide out in Russia 🇷🇺. Though Trump is trying to turn the US 🇺🇸 into Russia 🇷🇺 every day that he’s in power. That’s why there’s this flamboyant German scientist 🇩🇪👨‍🔬 who likes wearing capes, listening to music to stay calm, and has a kinky dommy mommy as a wife working in a US military base 🇺🇸 in New Mexico, creating super soldiers for the military. 

 

Though at the beginning of the movie, Dr. Kammler is working for a private military contractor, that’s leasing the base from the military, the super soldiers are actually for this private military contractor, but they are clearly supposed to be for military purposes. If the experiments had gone well, and if the company that Kammler was working for had bought the super soldiers from him, they likely would’ve sold them to the military to use in the actual field. Though according to Kammler’s wife, Hanna, they planning to use these guys ♂︎ on the civilian population. That’s what their purpose was. They weren’t meant to be sent out into the field in a foreign country, they were meant to keep the civilian population here in America 🇺🇸 in check. Pretty much like ICE agents if they were actually competent. It turns out that Hanna wasn’t just Kammler’s kinky wife who he liked to lick the shoes 👠 of, she was in on the experiments too, and was actually apart of them, and instrumental in making them happen. 

 

She tells the US government cleaner 🇺🇸, Cyrus to stand down, and let the super soldiers kill people so they can collect the research data on them, and assess their abilities now that they’re technically in the field, and are doing what they were “programmed” to do. Though they aren’t robots, they’re genetically enhanced super humans 🧬, but they still be programmed, as if they are machines. Just like the UniSols in the Universal Soldier franchise. His job from then on is to just cover up the super soldiers’ existence every time they kill people, like when they attack a gas station ⛽️. Cyrus kills the last remaining survivor of that attack, and orders the whole building be burned down. Then, at the end of the movie, when he meets Celeste, he tells her to pretend that this never happened, that there weren’t any super soldiers and they didn’t attack this trailer park and kill almost everyone inside, and never speak about it to anyone. Otherwise, she’ll probably be killed. 

 

Though seeing how she managed to kill all the super soldiers, almost by herself, Hanna decides to keep Celeste around and put her under surveillance, keeping tabs on her. Perhaps so she could turn her into a super soldier someday 👀. The parts that focus on Kammler, Hanna, and Cyrus, are the parts of the movie where it’s at its most camp, and yet, they’re the parts of the movie that feel the most like an A24 movie. Especially since these scenes feature a lot of long stretches with no dialogue and music playing on top (pretty much music montages), and there’s all this overt sexuality on display, all this kinky stuff on display, and drug use. Is it weird that I associate fetish, kink stuff, and drug stuff with A24? Maybe, but I think these are the kinds of things you’d see in an A24 movie. A lot of A24 movies try to be fever dream movies, movies that are weird for the sake of being weird, or movies that are weird for the sake of seeming smart and sophisticated. 

Ironically, the parts of the movies don’t really feel like an A24 movie are the parts focused on Celeste and her daughter, Daisy. Wonder if her and ex-husband, Griffin named her after Princess Daisy, like how Robin Williams named his daughter Zelda after the character Zelda in the Legend of Zelda games. I know Daisy’s a pretty common name, and it existed long before Princess Daisy did, but that’s the thought that immediately popped into my head while writing this. Now, if their daughter was named Peach or Rosalina, then I would think that she was named Princess Peach or Princess Rosalina from the Mario franchise. Though most of the time, Rosalina is just called Rosalina and not Princess Rosalina despite the fact that she is a princess. 

 

You’d think that these parts would feel the most like an A24 movie since it’s much more like a drama, and it’s about a mother/daughter relationship, and those seem to be really popular with the A24 crowd. Some of the most popular and acclaimed A24 movies have to do with mother/daughter relationships. But, they don’t really. They still feel like an indie movie, but not an A24 movie. Like I said, A24 movies tend to be esoteric and weird, and the parts involving Celeste and Daisy, and the other people at the trailer park, don’t really feel like that. Perhaps the opening scene where Celeste is using a bunch of Jack o’ Lanterns 🎃 for target practice, because she likes guns and likes shooting, but not the other parts focused on her and her relationship with her estranged daughter. 

 

BTW, her ex-husband, Griffin is played by Jacob Scipio, the actor who played Armando in the Bad Boys sequels (the ones not directed by Michael Bay), Bad Boys for Life and Bad Boys: Ride or Die, and Galan in Expend4bles (yes that really is the official title of that movie). He’s always playing the adult sons of other characters, you know Armando is the son of Mike Lowrey and Galan is the son of Galgo, Antonio Banderas’s character in The Expendables 3. Well, this is the first time that I know where he isn’t playing someone else’s son, but is instead of playing a father. A divorced father who is newly wed, and is more successful, polite, and clean cut than his more scrappy and scraggly looking ex-wife. He has actually social etiquette, and teaches little ol’ Daisy proper etiquette too, while Celeste does not. She lacks in social etiquette and manners, being as rude and sloppy as they come. While we are clearly supposed to hate him as much as Celeste, you can’t really hate him, and you’re actually kind of on his side and you see where he’s coming from, wanting to move out of New Mexico and live somewhere else because as we can clearly see, Celeste is not fit to parent Daisy. 

 

She’s a drunk mess, who seems like she’s always broke, and is basically the landlady to all the people living in this trailer park. Always asking them to pay rent when none of them actually can, and are just as broke as she is. In fact, them being broke and not being able to pay is probably why she’s broke. It’s a trailer park full of broke people, run by a broke person. How she’s able to afford all these guns is anyone’s guess. Maybe she just blows all the money 💵 she gets from the other trailer park residents paying their rent on guns and alcohol 🥃, which is why doesn’t have the money 💵 for anything. She’s clearly living a miserable existence, even if she denies it, and that’s no place to raise a child. Even in a co-parenting situation. 

 

She’s a very dysfunctional person at the beginning of the movie, and frankly for most of the film, and is clearly not fit to be a parent. She gets angry 😡 when Griffin brings their daughter to the trailer park to stay with her over the weekend. She’s upset that she didn’t get to spend the weekend drinking and shooting by herself, and has to look out for her daughter, and she kind of takes it out on everyone, including her daughter to a certain extent. Like, she gets visibly upset when she sees Daisy doing things that way her father and his new wife taught her, and forces her to do things her way because her way is better, and nothing Griffin does is good because he’s asshole. In her opinion. Like, when she sees Daisy trying to eat a burrito 🌯 with a fork and knife 🍴, she tells “no, eat it with her hands,” and picks up the burrito 🌯 with her hands and put it in her mouth right in front of her. 

 

She’s a very petty and vindictive person, and it’s unclear by the end of the movie whether or not she actually learned anything and became a better person from this experience. She’s kind of the same person at the end that she is at the beginning. Only she’s less angry 😡. Maybe because she has no one left to be angry 😡 about, since all the other trailer park residents kept her in a perpetual state of rage 😡. She is angry 😡 pretty much through this whole movie, and doesn’t do a good job at hiding it, especially to her daughter. The only person who she can find relate to her, and actually tolerate her, push back against her when she goes out of line is the Vietnam veteran 🇻🇳, Josiah, who a lot of reviewers said was the best character in the movie. I wouldn't go that far, but I do like him. I'm surprised that they actually did a fake out with his death, where they make you think he died, succumbing to his wounds, but then the next day, he wakes up. He really did just need a rest 😴. Though given his injuries, in real life, he would've been dead by the time the Sun rose 🌄 the next day, just from blood loss 🩸 alone. I can totally see how people wouldn’t like Celeste, and would think she’s an unlikable character and wouldn’t be able to root for her, or enjoy the movie because of her because she is such a bitch for most of this movie, but it didn’t really bother me that much. 

 

 

 

 

 

(This is a wallpaper image for Onslaught (2026), showing Celeste the next day after defeating the super soldiers, covered in blood 🩸 and covering her left eye with a cloth since she didn't have an actual eyepatches on hand to cover her hand after one of the super soldiers gave her a cut next to her eye.) 

 

 

 

 

Maybe because Adria Arjona is pretty hot and I still found her pretty attractive 😍 in this role, even though it requires her to look decidedly unglamorous, but you know what? I like unglamorous women ♀︎. And I do the tomboyish thing she’s got going, being into guns and shooting and having a military background. Not just having a military background and being a veteran, but being a combat veteran. She was no nurse or combat medic, she was a sniper. And I do like that eyepatch look that she has at the end of the movie during the trailer park attack. She didn't lose her eye like I thought she would going into it after seeing that image of her with her eye covered with a makeshift eyepatch (that's just a piece of cloth of some kind), she just got a cut next to her eye from what it is. So once it heals up, she'll be alright. That being said, I still probably wouldn’t want to her to be my girlfriend, because of her other negative personality traits. She’s a drinker, I’ not, she has a temper 😠, I have a temper 😠, I feel we’d be budding heads a lot. A person with a temper 😠 needs someone with a cooler head to balance them out. 

 

Besides, if this character was a man ♂︎, and had pretty much the same exact character traits, no one would complain. Straight men ♂︎ certainly wouldn’t complain. The only people who would are women ♂︎ and queer folk. A lot of people have enjoyed male characters ♂︎ who were assholes and dysfunctional human beings, like people liked Bruce Willis’s character, Joe Hallenbeck in The Last Boy Scout and he was an asshole and a dysfunctional person. He was pretty exactly like Celeste, only a lot more sarcastic and smart-alecky. Everyone in that movie’s an asshole and a dysfunctional person (that whole movie’s mean-spirited). But the moment that these character traits are applied to a female character ♀︎, all of a sudden, it’s a problem. 

 

Men ♂︎ don’t just complain about it, but women ♀︎ do too, because women ♀︎ in movies are not allowed to be bad people, unless they’re outright villains. They have to be sweet, polite, submissive, and non-confrontational, and in case of women ♀︎ who complain about women ♀︎ who are bad people in movies and TV shows, they have to be perfect role models, and they can’t be portrayed in any remotely negative light or have any negative personality traits, otherwise it’s misogynist. Even if they made this character stoic and had her barely talk, instead of being angry and mean 😠, people would still complain. They would say that she’s boring and has no emotion. Even though we all know that they wouldn’t say such things about a stoic male character who barely speaks. 

The movie features other stylistic flourishes that also make it feel like an A24 movie, like making all the flashback scenes black and white and the use of slow motion in more than a couple of scenes. The kind of things Adam Wingard didn’t do in the MonsterVerse movies he directed, although he did use slow motion in his two MonsterVerse movies. His movies are the only entries in the MonsterVerse that have slow motion in them. Still, he doesn’t use slow motion nearly as much as Zack Snyder. When Zack Snyder does slow motion, he usually does speed ramping, where something will start out slow, and then speed up real fast, and slow again at the most dramatic moment to create the coolest shot. He used this a lot in 300, but Zack Snyder by no means invented speed ramping since the Wachowskis used speed ramping during the final fight between Neo and Smith in The Matrix Revolutions. There’s a lot of music in this movie, a lot of licensed songs, which is another thing that he did in his MonsterVerse entries. 

 

His MonsterVerse entries are the only ones that have an extensive use of licensed music besides Kong: Skull Island, which was directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts, because that’s only because it was a Vietnam War movie 🇻🇳, and Vietnam War movies 🇻🇳 are pretty much obligated to use licensed music. But the parts of the movie focused on the super soldiers feel like a traditional slasher movie and not at all like a A24 movie, the entire last third of the movie set at the trailer park at the end is when the movie drops any pretenses about being an A24 movie and just goes balls to the wall crazy. Indeed, the parts involving the super soldiers really are the best parts of the movie. People compared the super soldiers in this movie to slasher movie villains, like Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Leatherface, only with much better firepower. Like, they’re slasher villains if they used guns instead of knives, machetes, or chainsaws, although the super soldiers do eventually start using more melee weapons like a cleaver, an axe 🪓, and a chainsaw. If the Leatherface comparison wasn’t apparent enough. And indeed, that is what Adam Wingard was going for, in one of the promotional videos for the movie that A24 uploaded on their own official YouTube channel, he specifically said that this was a slasher movie. 

 

If a group of UniSols were fully unleashed on a civilian population, and there was no Luc Deveraux (who is Jean-Claude Van Damme’s character in the Universal Soldier movies) to stop them, it pretty much would be a slasher movie. And as a slasher movie, I think the movie succeeds. The parts where it’s just the super soldiers killing people are the most entertaining parts of the movie. It’s a different take on a slasher movie because the slasher villains in the movies mainly use guns, at least at first. Once they run out of bullets, they switch to using mainly melee weapons like a typical slasher villain would. They could've had them use bayonets, that way they're still using military weapons, but they're stabbing and slashing instead of shooting. And it does makes you wish that there were more characters in this movie so that there could even an higher body count. The body count of the movie is 78, including the super soldiers themselves according Carnage Counts’s video on the movie. So a lot of people do die in this, but it could’ve been a lot more, we could’ve spent a lot more time showing the super soldiers going around killing random people before they reached the trailer park. 

That’s kind of the one problem I have with this movie is that it kind of goes by too fast. It takes so long for the super soldiers to escape containment and go on their killing spree, and the trailer park attack takes up so much of the movie’s runtime, that it makes the movie feel a lot shorter than it actually is. The movie’s 92 minutes long, or 1 hour and 32 minutes, but it feels a lot more like 82 minutes, or 1 hour and 22 minutes. And most of the runtime is setup for the first half, and the rest of it is the trailer park attack, there’s just little short section in the middle where we see the super soldiers attack somewhere that isn’t the trailer park. Which is crazy because We Bury the Dead 🧟‍♂️ had a similar runtime, 95 minutes, or 1 hour and 35 minutes, a few minutes longer, and yet it still felt way longer this movie. That movie felt more like 125 minutes, or 2 hours and 5 minutes. 

 

And then Beware Boiúna was technically the longest one out of all them, 102 minutes, or 1 hour and 42 minutes, and yet it still felt a lot longer than this movie and way shorter than We Bury the Dead 🧟‍♂️. I also felt like the final confrontation between Celeste and the last surviving super soldier, Butcher, could’ve gone on a lot longer than it did. They just charge at each other, and while Butcher makes a big swing at her with this axe 🪓 that he grabbed, she dodges it, and then saws his leg off with the chainsaw that she got from Cockroach 🪳, and impales him with the chainsaw until he’s dead. I think we could’ve gotten a much more drawn out fight, with Celeste actually kind of struggling against him, to really show vulnerable she is and how strong the super soldiers. 

 

Some people might be bothered by the seeming ease in which the super soldiers are all killed, given that they are supposed to super soldiers, and people might be opposed to them dying at all, but the super soldiers, no matter how super they are, are still mortal. They can be killed. They were genetically modified 🧬 to not feel pain, just like the Vipers from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Nathan Caine from Novocaine (2025), but that doesn’t mean they’re completely indestructible. Just because you can’t feel pain doesn’t mean you can’t die. You can still die, you just won’t feel it happen, if it’s from an external cause and not natural causes. Sure, they’re bullet proof, and simply shooting them doesn’t work, but that doesn’t mean that they’re immune to good ol’ fashioned melee weapons, or at least a good headshot. Cockroach 🪳 dies from getting shot in the head by Celeste making good use of her sniping skills, and then Butcher dies from getting impaled by a chainsaw. 

 

The only one who’s death isn’t clear in how it happened is Crybaby 😭, who attacks Celeste, Daisy, and the police officer, Kovacks in Kovacks’s unit 🚔, but then Celeste shoots him, and then the car crashes into a dumpster, and both Crybaby 😭 and Kovacks are both dead. I guess you could say that the crash killed him, but still. The point is that they’re mortal and aren’t completely unkillable, and are never established to be. A lot of slasher villains are mortal, and do end up dying by the end. So, this movie isn’t really doing anything different, or breaking some unspoken rule about slasher villains not dying at the end of their movie. Besides, if the super soldiers were unkillable like Jason (Zombie Jason to be more specific), then Celeste wouldn’t have won. 

 

I do like that the super soldiers all have nicknames to distinguish them from each other: Butcher, Cockroach 🪳, and Crybaby 😭. All their names are tied to their past lives before they got turned into super soldiers. They were all war criminals, guilty of killing civilians, or killing their own fellow soldiers, which is why it’s no wonder that they were chosen to be turned into the perfect killing machines (basically fleshly automatons), designed to go after civilian targets on US soil 🇺🇸. And of course, Celeste has a personal connection to one of them, Butcher. They served in the same unit together, and they fought each other in a MMA-type match during their off-time, and Celeste beat him in that fight, kneecapping him in the balls. Something that she tells her daughter about in a bedtime story, as a good mother should 😁. He's reminded of her and their fight back in active duty in whatever country they stationed in (they never actually say) when he goes into her trailer and finds a picture of him and her together when they were serving together, and decides to target her specifically, and get revenge for what she did to him that day. 

 

Of course, Butcher ends up losing again to her, and for the exact same reason as last time too, he got too cocky and underestimated her. But what can you do? She's the protagonist and he's the antagonist in a slasher movie, of course she was going to win and he was going to lose. Is it a huge coincidence that the one trailer park that the super soldier just happen to stop at just happens to have the woman ♀︎ beat him in a fight back when they were both serving in war together? Perhaps even a plot contrivance? Yes, but I think it works for this film. It gives the hero and villain more of a rivalry with each other, and thus makes it a bit more engaging. Since Celeste never meets the other villains like Kammler or Hanna, and never establishes an adversarial relationship with them, this is next best thing. 

 

Plus it makes the super soldiers a bit more tragic, the fact that someone that the protagonist knew when she on active duty, even if it was in a rivalry, got turned into a monster against his will and used as a tool by the US government 🇺🇸. Sure, he and the other super soldiers escaped containment, but Hanna found a way to use it to their advantage, and pretty let them attack people, to collect research data on their performance in the “field.” So it is like they're still being used as tools, even they're technically going against their programming. I mean, they're following their programming, to a T, they're missing applying it and targeting the wrong people at the wrong time. But them escaping and going on a rampage, killing innocent civilians, still worked within the US government 🇺🇸's favor, or at least, Hanna's favor since they were supposed to be used on civilians anyway. They were playing right into the government's hands, even though they were technically acting against it by escaping and acting completely on their own. But you still don't feel totally sorry for them since they were war criminals before they got turn into super soldiers and tools for the government, so they were already pieces of shit before they became silent murderous monsters. 

 

This movie has been noted for its strong John Carpenter influences, particularly in Chris Bombray's review for JoBlo, and the music is where the John Carpenter influences are the most apparent. The movie uses a lot of synthesizer music, which is the type of music that John Carpenter mainly used in his movies. He composed the music for a lot of his own movies, though in some co-composed it. Though, it could argued that this not something Adam Wingard did specifically because he was influenced by John Carpenter while making this and wanted to pay tribute to him, but something he just likes to do since he also included synthesizer music in the MonsterVerse movies he did. Particularly The New Empire, The New Empire had the most synthesizer music out of any of the MonsterVerse movies that have been made so far.  

 

Godzilla vs. Kong still had a fairly traditional score, but The New Empire is where Adam Wingard went full synthesizer. So this isn't really a new thing, or something he's doing to pay tribute to John Carpenter, this is just what he does. Though clearly the music in this movie is going for a more overt John Carpenter vibe since it is more of that lower budgeted, smaller scale, striped down movie that Carpenter is known for. For what it's worth, the music for this movie is pretty good. I especially like the main theme, which is just called "Onslaught," and is used for the opening title sequence, which is also pretty cool, and is where the movie gets the most political since it features footage of and quotes from actual US presidents 🇺🇸. Both Republican and Democrat, though most Republican since of the two major political parties in the US 🇺🇸, the Republican Party is the most warmongering. That's another thing that Adam Wingard retained from the MonsterVerse when making this movie, the awesome title sequences set to equally awesome music that get you pumped. Matthew Pusti did a really good job with the score. 

 

But regardless of how similar this movie is to movies like Universal Soldier (1992) and Soldier (1998), or is influenced by the work of John Carpenter, it actually traces more of its origins to a couple of Adam Wingard's earlier movies. Pre-MonsterVerse. The Guest (2014) and You're Next. Adam Wingard actually considers these movies as part of a trilogy, a thematic trilogy, which I guess is another way in which he was influenced by John Carpenter since he famously created a thematic trilogy of "apocalypse movies," consisting of The Thing (1982), Princess of Darkness, and In the Mouth of Madness. But unlike Carpenter's "Apocalypse Trilogy," which had no real connection to each other beyond just sharing a similar theme about the world potentially coming to an end, two of the films in Adam Wingard's thematic trilogy do have actual connection beyond just sharing a similar theme. 

 

This movie is actually in continuity with The Guest (2014), and while no actual characters from The Guest (2014) appear in the film as far as I know, according to Adam Wingard, the movie is set in the same town as The Guest (2014), or near the same town, since we don't see a town in the movie. All we see is that trailer park where Celeste lives and is the landlady of and the gas station ⛽️ that appears as if it's in the middle of nowhere. Not the location in Courage the Cowardly Dog (the place that show takes place is literally called Nowhere), as in there's nothing else around except for this gas station ⛽️. Even the trailer park is pretty secluded, since it takes the super soldiers a long time to drive there in a semi truck. 

 

And it focuses on a different super soldier program than the one featured in The Guest (2014). Sort of like how The Bourne Legacy focused on a different program than the one that the main Bourne trilogy did, which is actually fitting that I make that comparison since The Guest (2014) was more about the Jason Bourne kind of super soldier, where they're trained and conditioned, and perhaps even brainwashed to be the ultimate soldier or ultimate assassin, whereas this movie, Onslaught (2026) is more about the UniSol kind of super soldier, where they're soldiers who died during combat or were presumed dead and then get genetically enhanced 🧬 to become the ultimate soldier. One who has super strength, senses, and agility, and has some level of invulnerability, and follows orders no matter what, and has no moral quandaries. Knowing that this movie is connected to The Guest (2014) makes me want to watch it. I added it to my review list after I watched the first trailer to this movie, and found out about the connection. So expect a review of that movie sometime in the future. 

 

This movie was not only shot in New Mexico, but also takes place there. It actually features one prominent location ☝️ that I recognize pretty well. The gas station ⛽️ that Celeste and Daisy visit, and then the super soldier quickly after attack. That gas station ⛽️ is a real gas station ⛽️. It's not a set or soundstage, it's the real deal. Specifically, it's the Laguna Pit Stop near the Route 66 Casino Hotel, which is owned and run by the Pueblo of Laguna, which is a Puebloan Native American tribe native to New Mexico. Their reservation is located right next to ours, the Pueblo of Acoma, and we have very close relations with the Laguna people. Many Acoma tribal members are in fact married to Laguna tribal members, and their children are part Laguna and part Acoma. Though it's up to the parents whether they want to register their kids as an Acoma or a Laguna tribal member, and which of the parents' culture they want to induct their children more into.

 

I recognized it pretty instantaneously, I go there quite often. Many to stop to use the bathroom 🚽 on the way back to Acoma. I actually do recall seeing a filming crew setup right next the bridge you get on to get to the casino 🎰 a couple of years back, and I was wondering what it was for and what they were filming. I think that they were filming this movie, Onslaught (2026), specifically the parts set at the gas station ⛽️. Though it's not actually the Laguna Pit Stop in the movie. It's a fictional gas station ⛽️ called Buck's Fuel Stop. But Laguna Pit Stop was used as the filming location and stand in for Buck's Fuel Stop. I just think it's so cool that a location that I've been too so many times and am familiar with was used as filming location in a somewhat mainstream movie like this. That's one of the fun parts about watching a movie filmed in New Mexico, being able to recognize and point out all the filming locations. And I'm sure other people in other states feel the same way whenever a mainstream movie is filmed in their state. Of the two movies filmed and set in New Mexico that I've seen this year, this one is the best. 

 

If you were excited to see Michael Biehn in this movie after you found out he was in the movie from watching the trailer, sadly I have to disappoint you because he's not in it for much. He's in the first half of the movie, and his role ultimately just a cameo one. He doesn't even get to do any action, or meet Celeste, or interact any of the characters besides Kammler. He's just the boss, the guy ♂︎ who was sent by the private military contractor he works for to check on Kammler's progress, and who Kammler ultimately reports to. He's the guy ♂︎ in the movie that's always rushing the experiments and saying things like "the government or the board wants results," he's that character in this movie. And then he gets killed by the super soldiers along with Kammler when they fake their deaths, and then kill all the scientists 👨‍🔬👩‍🔬 in their successful escape attempt. Then he's out of the movie and we never see him again. So, don't go into this movie expecting to see a lot of Michael Biehn because there just isn't that much. He had more screen time and had a larger role in Michael Bay's The Rock (1996), and died roughly around the same point as in that movie, and that movie's way longer than this one. Being over 136 minutes, or 2 hours and 16 minutes long. Michael Bay doesn't make short movies, even when it benefit him to do so. 

 

There's also this timer that appears at different intervals during in the first half of the movie, counting down to the moment when the super soldiers actually escape from the facility and go on their killing spree. Starting from 7 or 8 hours to the very last second when they finally break out. I don't really know what the point of that was 😕, and it wasn't really needed. It never comes in play later on. Once the super soldiers break out of the facility, that timer is never shown again. Like, it's not like the timer in District 9 where it appears after Wikus has been exposed to the Dropship fuel (which contained Prawn DNA 🧬 since all the Prawns' 🦐 technology is encoded to their DNA 🧬) and starts turning into a Prawn 🦐 and it shows how long it's been since he's been exposed until he finally become a full Prawn 🦐.

 

There's also this scene that I want to talk about that isn't in the movie at all. You see, prior to actually seeing this movie, I saw this clip on YouTube that purported to be a scene from this movie. On YouTube, it's titled, "Prepare for the Onslaught" and it shows Celeste going to a hardware store and buying tools 🛠️, seemingly to use as weapons against the super soldiers. Why else would see be going to a hardware store? She's not exactly a handywoman, and if she was buying them to use as weapons, who else would she be using them as weapons against? Not only that, but Celeste is much more well dressed, clean cut, and much more well put together, isn't all scraggly as she is in the rest of the movie. She looks like she was ready to conquer the world. But that scene isn't in the film at all. I was waiting to come on, but it never did. Celeste never goes to a hardware store at any point during the movie. 

 

I wondered if it was some kind of after credits scene, so I checked on Wikipedia to see if there was an after credits scene in this movie, but there's not. So my only guess as to what this is scene is and why it's not in the movie at all is that it's a deleted scene. This is why I hope the movie gets a physical release and it comes loaded with special features, so I could find out for sure if this is a deleted scene or not. And if it is, at what point would it have gone? Because there's never any point where Celeste travels outside the trailer park except for that secluded area where she does target practice and that gas station ⛽️ seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and she never dresses the way that she's dressed in this clip in the rest of the movie. So what's going on here? I need to know.

 

 

(This is a wallpaper image for Onslaught (2026). It's really just an expanded version of the main poster, without the text, showing Celeste leaning against a window or a door, holding a gun that looks like an assault rifle of some kind, perhaps even an AR-15, while the shadow of one of the super soldiers looms next to her...ominously.)