The summer movie season is winding down, and traders are predicting that one of the season’s last offerings, the military slasher Onslaught, will earn a “Fresh” Tomatometer reading.
Onslaught has opened to a 74% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes, and Kalshi's market forecasts the score will finish at 68.1%.
For informational purposes only. Not trading advice. See full disclaimer below. Kalshi is not affiliated with Onslaught or A24.
What’s it about?
Director Adam Wingard, the filmmaker behind Godzilla vs. Kong and Netflix’s Death Note remake, helmed the action-horror film.
Adria Arjona plays Celeste, a military sniper still reeling from her time in the war. She lives in a trailer park for Army veterans in a small desert town, and her ex-husband shows up unexpectedly to drop off their daughter on her doorstep.
Meanwhile, a secret military base is working on creating a group of psychopathic super-soldiers for a private military company. The soldiers escape, start attacking nearby towns, and make their way to the trailer park. Celeste must confront her past and use her military skills to protect her daughter and neighbors from the super-soldiers.
The positive reviews
Some critics praised the film's tense action while highlighting its themes about military violence and sacrifice.
Variety's Siddhant Adlakha enjoyed the film's high-energy action and slasher-movie tension.
“When you have a defenseless child in the mix, and a mother willing to go to great lengths to protect her, what you’re left with is bound to be a good time, especially as Wingard and composer Matthew Pusti pluck on your nerves with their taut audiovisual assembly,” Adlakha wrote.
Dread Central's Matt Konopka wrote that Onslaught blends “The Fog with The Terminator and a dash of Halloween to unleash an atmospheric action horror movie.”
Konopka also highlighted the film's political commentary about military violence.
“It’s a graphic and shocking commentary on the terror of unleashing heavily armed soldiers on ordinary citizens,” Konopka wrote. “That horror strikes at the heart of the state of America, where we have unaccountable forces roaming the streets murdering innocent people.”
The negative reviews
Onslaught may be in “Fresh” territory, but that doesn’t mean all of the movie’s reviews are positive ones.
The Wrap's William Bibbiani was less enthusiastic, describing it as a film that promises more than it delivers. He also criticized its pacing.
“The actual onslaught part of the movie doesn’t begin until surprisingly late, and the part where Celeste finally fights back doesn’t kick in until several scenes later,” Bibbiani wrote. “Adam Wingard’s movie may be a throwback to low-budget genre classics of yore…but it doesn’t understand what made those films work.”
RogerEbert.com's Simon Abrams gave the movie two out of four stars and described it as “contrived” and “predictable.”
“It’s still hard to understand why this kind of B-movie thought experiment is being re-presented now when we already have government-sanctioned thugs stalking and brutalizing anyone they can get their hands on,” Abrams wrote. “There’s a lot of familiar, sturdy genre movie savvy on display in Onslaught, but none of it’s detailed or novel enough to resonate.”
Despite the mixed reactions, traders currently expect the positive reviews to outweigh the negative ones, with Onslaught's projected Tomatometer holding at 68.1%.
The takeaway:
Kalshi markets now predict:
Onslaught's Rotten Tomatoes rating: 68.1%
Follow Danny Gallagher on Instagram: @writerdannygallagher
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