“Onslaught,” Adam Wingard’s return to indie horror, sees the filmmaker reveling in newfound freedom after directing two “Godzilla x Kong” movies. Dripping with style, references and lots of gore, this John Carpenter-inspired kill fest puts its R-rating to the test. But it’s both too much, and not enough. Like its big baddies, the bruising “Onslaught” is lacking one major element: a brain.

It has everything else though: German-language covers of “Paint it Black,” Drew Starkey with bleached eyebrows, a drug-fueled BDSM orgy, Adria Arjona in Snake Plissken drag, bit parts for beloved ‘80s action stars, a cute little kid, more slo-mo than you can shake a stick at, and Dan Stevens doing a crazy accent while licking Rebecca Hall’s feet. All that in 92 minutes and it still feels slight, a film with all the heft of a tumbleweed blowing across the desert.

If the film is an onslaught of anything, it’s movie references, wacky costumes and quirky needle drops. If only there was a decent script to undergird all it all, then maybe it would be even slightly compelling. Alas, borrowing Carpenter’s surface-level signatures doesn’t mean that his impeccable sense of suspense and rhythm are also transferred, or his sharp cultural commentary. And utilizing a masked, relentless killer like Michael Myers only works if he’s wielding a knife, not an automatic weapon.

Written by Wingard’s longtime collaborator Simon Barrett, “Onslaught” tries to marry “Rambo” to a sleazy 1970s Nazi exploitation film. Stevens, kitted out in a bald cap, old-age makeup and Bavarian accent, plays Hans Kammler, a German scientist experimenting on damaged American GIs in hopes of creating the ultimate supersoldier. His brutish boys are programmed to decimate any target in sight.

What he doesn’t know is that the real supersoldier is the property manager at the Windy Oasis trailer park down the road. A veteran and a single mom, Celeste (Arjona) keeps her shooting sharp and her gun locker full. A countdown clock lets us know that in about eight hours, she’s going to have to put those skills to use, as Kammler’s lab rats go rogue, escaping the private military facility. Their mindless destruction starts with a mass shooting at a truck stop, before they move on to the Windy Oasis, where they catch hell from the steely Celeste, backed up by Vietnam vet Josiah (Reginald VelJohnson).

We endure the disturbing imagery of the truck stop massacre (complete with video game style first person shooter POV) because we know where this is going from the opening frames of Celeste shooting targets in the desert — this is a final girl slasher with firepower. We want to cheer on the Davids as they take down the Goliaths. Unfortunately, “Onslaught” is just a dirge.

Wingard clearly thinks he’s making a fun movie, but it’s not. It’s not fun to watch masked supersoldiers, armed to the teeth, hunt a child, her mother and an elderly neighbor in a trailer park. There’s no suspense, no tension, no push-and-pull in the pace — it’s just chainsaws tearing through particle board.

And when their comeuppance does arrive, it’s not satisfying. Celeste’s badass one-liners don’t land; it’s just all a bunch of flailing and blood geysers. Her backstory, built up as she retells it to her daughter, and shown to us in black-and-white flashbacks, is oddly thin too. Please sir, a crumb of character development or motivation?

“Onslaught” and any intrigue it might bear dies as soon as Stevens and his freaky weirdness prematurely exit the picture, and there’s no reviving it. Wingard attempts resurrection by introducing Starkey and his aforementioned eyebrows as Cyrus, a private military operative yanked out of a sex party and placed on “janitorial” duty. Starkey gives an inspired performance, punctuated with funny little hops and twitches, and his look, replete with Euro mullet, does a lot of heavy lifting. We anticipate a big third act showdown with Celeste and Cyrus as he mops up blood and witnesses, but it never comes, so ultimately, his function in the story is merely an opportunity to insert some edgy sex and drugs.

That encapsulates everything wrong with “Onslaught”: each element offers some aesthetic or winky titillation, but has no emotional purpose. While Barrett suggests a whole world of lore that goes unexplored, the film’s climax is completely missing in action. A bunch of unnecessary and fussy stylistic tics merely serve to distract from the fact that there is simply no there there.

What makes this emptiness more bothersome is the cavalier way Wingard wields the imagery of rogue, militarized killers, men ruined by the military industrial complex, wreaking havoc on the American landscape. That part is too real, too disturbing, and Barrett’s hollow script avoids tackling the subject head on. “Onslaught” might be bloody, but it’s brainless.

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'ONSLAUGHT'

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for strong bloody violence, some gore, sexual material/nudity, and language)

Running time: 1:32

How to watch: In theaters Sept. 4

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