From the filmmaker who not only brought you Godzilla vs Kong but also some genre hits like You’re Next, The Guest and also rebooted Blair Witch, Adam Wingard is back with a smaller movie than his monster mash. Paul takes a look below!
About: When a rogue squad of genetically engineered super soldiers break loose in the desert, a badass Army sniper must unleash hell to protect her young daughter.
Reaction: This is a trashy b-movie all the way, given more than a bit of visual style by director Wingard, slumming it here between big budget Godzilla movie assignments. In a remote New Mexico desert, the government has been conducting secret experiments hoping to develop a super soldier (where have we heard that one before?). A demonstration goes wrong and three robotic universal soldiers escape the compound to wreak havoc on a local small town and a remote trailer park. In that abjectly depressing trailer park, (the Windy Oasis Trailer Park, says the rusting sign), lives an ex-Armed forces divorced mother named Celeste (Adria Arjona, who impressed in the Glen Powell filmHit Man). She suffers from PTSD and spends a lot of time on an improvised shooting range featuring pumpkin targets. She lives in the isolated trailer park because it makes her “feel safe”, a major miscalculation when the murderous soldiers suddenly appear. That she just happens to have custody of her young daughter for a few days at the exact moment that the soldiers show up, is just the sort of ironic coincidence that b-movie plot mechanics rely on. And if there one thing that b-movies agree on, hell hath no fury as a trained-to-kill Mom protecting her young. It is hardly a fair match. Throw in some totally gratuitous BDSM scenes, a proclivity shared by both the experiment’s designer and the government investigator sent to clean up the mess, and you have a slick but totally improbable movie that benefits greatly from the windswept desolate production design, and Arja’s committed tough girl action heroics. This is the sort of film that, at one time, would have been best enjoyed at a drive-in.
Rating: 4 out of 10
