Production: Onslaught

Oren Soffer, DOP on Adam Wingard’s action flick Onslaught, blended old-school techniques with modern tech to achieve the film’s tactile, retro aesthetic

Words Katie Kasperson

There’s something about the eighties that seems to ignite our collective nostalgia. Whether it’s a shadowy John Carpenter 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.”

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.”

Evoking the old days

Soffer swapped modern devices like drones and gimbals for Steadicams, tripods and dollies – because “that’s what filmmakers in the eighties had at their disposal,” he says. He extended this logic to lens choice as well, opting for Panavision E Series anamorphics. “So many of our references were shot on those lenses, and they have such a distinct look. Even our choice of focal length was inspired by films of that time; we studied our references and noticed that a lot of shots were telephoto.

“In terms of lighting,” Soffer adds, “especially in the nighttime work, we wanted that backlit, blue look. We called it Terminator blue. We were specific about that in the colour grade and throughout the entire process, but I don’t think we did it to the point of limiting ourselves,” he clarifies. “It was all an attempt to evoke or be inspired by films of that time and channel them, but not to the point of pastiche or parody. Our number one priority was the story, and we didn’t want these things to take precedence.”

Filming largely at night, Soffer sought a camera that would perform well in low light. For his main body, he doubled up on the ARRI ALEXA 35, which has a Super 35 sensor and a maximum ISO of 6400. In turn, “we were able to light with relatively low-power, low-wattage LEDs, as opposed to much bigger, brighter, more traditional lights,” he shares. “We did embrace modern technology,” using a combination of Aputure, NANLUX, Astera and Creamsource fixtures. He also employed the Sony FX3, fitted with Blazar Remus anamorphics, for car mounts, in tight spaces and other specialist shots.

On-set, each trailer had practical lights both inside and out, which were all placed by the film’s electrical team. “We also used these theatrical, hard spotlights,” sometimes to mimic moonlight, which was then softened by artificial fog or haze, à la A Nightmare on Elm Street or film noir. Soffer played around with colour, too, using full-spectrum RGB LEDs.

Going big

While most of Onslaught is relatively restrained, stylistically speaking, Soffer decided to have some fun with the sex club scene. “We’re introduced to Drew Starkey’s character, a government agent who is sent to clean up after the escaped super soldiers,” he says. “The location is a fancy-looking mansion, and lighting-wise, we basically went crazy.” By day, the museum displays gems and jewellery under sterile, fluorescent lights; in the film, it was stripped down and ‘decked out with candles’ to make it feel more ‘strange and seductive’.

For Soffer, “It was fun to create the palette for that. We put red lights and a blue spotlight outside the stained-glass window. We put in atmospheric haze, so you could see these blue beams, and then there’s all this candlelight. If you saw a before and after of this location – what it was and what we turned it into – you wouldn’t believe it was the same space.”

He added other details, such as a strobe light, into the sequence to build a deeper, more believable world. “It just adds a little colour, metaphorically and physically,” he describes.

The crew had been spending so much time at the trailer park that they welcomed this change of pace. “We were so grounded in reality that when we had an opportunity, we were like, ‘How neon, saturated and colourful can we get – and get away with?’” Soffer says. “We pushed ourselves, and whenever you do that you second-guess yourself. But often that’s when you make the most interesting choices. ‘Is this too much? Is this too far?’ The answer is almost always no.”

While the crew hadn’t planned on it, Soffer was pleased that Onslaught was selected for an IMAX release. He urges audiences to see it in cinemas – just like they would have in the eighties. “It looks amazing on the big screen.”

Onslaught is set to hit US theatres on 4 September and 11 December in the UK. 

This article appears in the August/September 2026 issue of Definition