PRODUCTION ONSLAUGHT
T here’s something about the eighties that seems to ignite horror or a light-hearted John Hughes teen comedy, the films of that era still resonate. There’s a look, a feel, a vibe that filmmakers have since tried to replicate, often successfully; take Stranger Things , Everybody Wants Some!! or It , for example, which are all based in the eighties but made in modern times. Director Adam Wingard’s latest project Onslaught follows, albeit loosely, in their footsteps, taking visual inspiration from the decade while being set in the present day. “The way he described it to me,” begins Oren Soffer, who Wingard hired as the film’s DOP, “was that he wanted it to feel like, if you were in the eighties and channel surfing, you could stumble upon this movie – the kind you could pull out of a pile of old VHS tapes and it would feel like it’s exactly from that era.” our collective nostalgia. Whether it’s a shadowy John Carpenter
Soffer pulled inspiration primarily from Carpenter and James Cameron’s filmographies. “It’s The Terminator ,” he says. “It’s The Thing .” After establishing Onslaught ’s visual language with Wingard, “it was off to the races.” BLAST FROM THE PAST While Onslaught borrows some tropes from slashers, it’s an action film. “Visually, it’s drawing from a lot of different genres,” says Soffer. “It has horror, thriller and sci-fi elements. It’s also very funny. It’s a mash- up, and hard to pin down.” The story itself takes place over a single 24-hour stretch, like Die Hard or Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 . A group of genetically enhanced super soldiers have escaped a secret military facility, tormenting the residents of a trailer park – where our protagonist, an ex-army woman named Celeste, fights to protect her family. “There are daytime scenes earlier in the film and then it transitions through
sunset, dusk and then the last two-thirds are at night, with a little bit of daytime at the end,” Soffer explains. “When you’re filming across multiple days, you want the weather to be consistent; once you get into night shoots, it’s a lot easier because you have full control.” Soffer, Wingard and the crew worked on location – nothing was filmed virtually, though VFX did some minimal clean- up in post – in New Mexico, where the production designers built a trailer park set from scratch, which they used for both exteriors and interiors. Other locations included the military facility, a truck stop and an “ Eyes Wide Shut -esque sex club,” which they filmed at the Turquoise Museum in Albuquerque. They filmed day for night at the latter – placing blackout curtains beyond the windows to conceal any hint of sun – but shot the rest overnight. While night shoots and physical set builds were partially the result of a constrained budget, this more traditional filmmaking method lent itself to the eighties aesthetic they were aiming for. “It was to evoke the look and feel of that era,” Soffer states. “We attempted, as much as possible, to do practical effects, like gunshot squibs, glass shattering sparks and explosions.” At the truck stop, there’s a shootout scene that “sends things flying,” says Soffer. “It’s exaggerated. Those films have this tactile, intense nature to them, and we embraced that in our filmmaking choices – as well as our cinematographic choices.”
BACK IN TIME Onslaught pays homage to the eighties with a melting pot of genres such as action, horror and sci-fi
THERE’S SOMETHING about the 80s THAT SEEMS TO ignite our nostalgia ”
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