The action-horror gamble titled Onslaught from director Adam Wingard has stumbled badly with moviegoers, turning its modest price tag into an even bigger challenge. Adria Arjona leads the A24 release, but the film could not generate enough opening-weekend business to suggest a strong theatrical run.
Adam Wingard’s Onslaught flops on its opening box office weekend
As per Box Office Mojo, Onslaught opened September 4 across 1,918 theaters and collected $1.88 million through September 6. Its four-day Labor Day weekend total reached $2.33 million, a rough result for a production carrying a reported $15 million budget. The movie had initially been tracking toward roughly $2.5 million over the extended weekend, but even that projection would have represented a difficult start.
Audience reaction has not given the movie much of a boost, either. CinemaScore handed Onslaught a C, suggesting that the people who actually bought tickets were hardly blown away. In addition, the movie has only managed a 56% score on Rotten Tomatoes, placing the response somewhere between outright rejection and genuine enthusiasm. On the other hand, IMDB lists Onslaught at a score of 6.3.
The mixed reception makes more sense when looking at what Wingard attempted. Rather than another giant-scale monster spectacle like Godzilla vs. Kong or Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, the filmmaker returned to his smaller, rougher indie territory. Onslaught reunites him with Simon Barrett, his You’re Next and The Guest collaborator, and Wingard has framed the movie as the third piece of a loose trilogy connected to those films. He told audiences they could “technically call this a sequel” because it occupies the same universe (via World of Reel).
Arjona plays a mother living in a trailer park who must defend her young daughter and other loved ones after genetically engineered super-soldiers escape a secret military facility. Rebecca Hall, Dan Stevens, Michael Biehn, Reginald VelJohnson, Eric Wareheim, Drew Starkey, and Alex “Poatan” Pereira round out the cast.
The premise delivers plenty of pulpy action-horror ingredients, but the early audience grade suggests that the combination has not landed cleanly with ticket buyers.
Originally reported by Rishabh Shandilya for Coming Soon.
