Adam Wingard’s ‘Onslaught’ Earns a Lukewarm CinemaScore Grade From Opening Night Audiences

Horror thrillers built around retro genre throwbacks tend to split audiences right down the middle, and few filmmakers understand that divide quite as intimately as this particular director. After years spent navigating massive studio franchises, this latest project marked a deliberate return to smaller, scrappier storytelling roots.

Adam Wingard built his early reputation on lean, original horror films before spending the better part of a decade steering blockbuster monster movies through the Godzilla and Kong franchise. His newest release represented a conscious step back toward that earlier, more independent filmmaking style, trading massive creature battles for a much smaller-scale siege story.

That gamble has now received its first real verdict from opening night moviegoers. ‘Onslaught,’ starring Adria Arjona, received a C grade from opening night audiences on CinemaScore, a relatively lukewarm response for a film positioned as one of A24’s higher-profile genre releases this fall.

The film follows Celeste, an Army veteran turned trailer park manager played by Arjona, who must protect her community after a trio of experimental super soldiers escape a secret military facility and descend on the area. Dan Stevens co-stars as one of the film’s antagonists, alongside Rebecca Hall, Michael Biehn, Reginald VelJohnson and Eric Wareheim rounding out the ensemble cast.

Wingard and longtime collaborator Simon Barrett built the film’s tone around a specific era of genre cinema, drawing heavily from the work of John Carpenter and echoing the retro action-slasher sensibilities that first put Wingard on the map with films like ‘You’re Next’ and ‘The Guest.’ Several reviews specifically praised how convincingly the film recreates that obscure, VHS-era aesthetic, right down to its visual style and pacing.

Critics have been split on how well that throwback approach ultimately pays off. Some reviews praised Wingard’s knack for staging inventive, unexpected action sequences, including an early gas station massacre shot from the gun’s own point of view, along with a claustrophobic chase scene set beneath one of the trailer park’s mobile homes.

Reception has varied considerably depending on the outlet. Some critics praised the film as an exciting, muscular slasher that delivers on its genre promises even if the story doesn’t fully come together by its conclusion, while others were considerably harsher, criticizing the film’s subplots for going nowhere and describing its climax as rushed and underwhelming.

That divide extends to how critics have assessed Arjona’s central performance as well, with some praising her ability to sell the film’s cheesier dialogue through sheer charisma, while others felt she didn’t quite land as convincingly as a hardened military veteran. Dan Stevens, who previously worked with Wingard on both ‘The Guest’ and the recent Godzilla franchise films, has drawn attention for his campy, unsettling turn as one of the film’s central threats.

The C CinemaScore grade suggests opening night audiences responded with roughly the same mixed reaction critics have expressed since the film’s earlier screenings. That kind of middling audience score often signals a film whose tone or pacing choices proved more divisive than crowd-pleasing, even among viewers specifically seeking out genre horror.

‘Onslaught’ opened in theaters on September 4 through A24, marking Wingard’s first feature-length project in two years following the massive commercial success of his recent Godzilla and Kong films. Given the mixed critical and audience reception so far, the film’s box office trajectory over its opening weekend will likely determine how much staying power it has in an increasingly crowded fall genre release calendar.

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