Friday One Sheet: ONSLAUGHT

If Jean-Luc Godard said, about making movies, “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun,” then this poster check the boxes neatly. For years, poster and DVD sleeve designers have reduced J-CG's commentary even further to, "All you need is to display a gun." (And two guns are even better, but I digress.)

Onslaught may a kind of spiritual sequel to director Adam Wingard's The Guest, and it brings back Dan Stevens for another round, if only featured in as shadow here in this design. It's a wonderful use of the cream coloured siding, as a kind of dual negative space.  Both the openness and the villain is is contrast to star Adria Arjona in black interiors, framed by the window with shooting glasses and a heavy calibre fire-arm.

The exterior housing slats provide a nice alignment for both the tagline, and the title card. Since the latter is in red, it telegraphs that this film, beyond being an action picture, will also feature horror elements. And a thing about windows is that they have reflections; here you see the domesticity of the laundry, and a waiving American flag.

 

One thing that Wingard and writer Simon Barrett excel at when working this mid-budget scale (see also: You're Next) is a bit of dark satirical-irony around both genre movies and domestic American social mores. If you look at the reflection, you can almost see the Onslaught initial poster design hiding there, which is a neat touch.