Adria Arjona, Dan Stevens & Adam Wingard Reveal the Real Fears, Brutal Challenges and Twisted Characters Behind Onslaught
Onslaught may be packed with super soldiers, bloodshed and outrageous action, but according to Adria Arjona, Dan Stevens and director Adam Wingard, some of the movie’s most unsettling elements came from very real places.
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The A24 action-horror film puts Arjona at the center as Celeste, a mother and former soldier forced to confront an increasingly terrifying threat. Behind the camera, Wingard brings his signature genre sensibilities to a story that mixes explosive action with moments grounded in very recognizable fears. Stevens, meanwhile, embraces one of the movie’s strangest characters, disappearing beneath hours of prosthetics to play a scientist convinced that his work serves a greater purpose.
In an interview with Who Let Us Out, the trio opened up about the making of Onslaught, from Arjona discovering just how tough she could be to Wingard confronting his own fears of fatherhood and Stevens finding the humanity in a deeply disturbing character.
Adria Arjona Discovered She Was “A Lot Tougher” Than She Thought
For Arjona, Onslaught was as much a physical challenge as it was an emotional one.
Playing a mother dealing with PTSD required her to balance Celeste’s vulnerability with the physical demands of the movie. But filming in the middle of the New Mexico desert brought its own challenges.
“We filmed this movie in like gnarly environment,” Arjona recalled, explaining that the cast was working in freezing conditions in the middle of the desert.
The actress also revealed that she struggled with vertigo during the first two weeks of production before eventually adapting.
“I learned that I’m a little bit tougher than I thought,” she said.
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That realization became one of the unexpected takeaways from making the film. Arjona described reaching a point where she initially wondered whether she would be able to handle the demands of the production — only to realize she was already doing it.
“I’m like, holy shit, I’m doing it. I’m doing it.”
The physical experience also comes at an interesting time for Arjona, who is preparing for her still-secret role in DC’s Man of Tomorrow. While she couldn’t reveal who she’s playing, she explained that her work on Onslaught still became part of that preparation.
“I think every movie, every director prepares you for your next director,” Arjona explained.
She pointed specifically to her experience working on Andor with Tony Gilroy before Onslaught, saying that each project teaches her something that carries into the next.
“I think every movie kind of helps you with your next movie for sure.”
Adam Wingard Turned His Biggest Fear Into Onslaught
For Wingard, the emotional foundation of Onslaught came from somewhere surprisingly personal: becoming a father.
Asked what scares him as a filmmaker, Wingard didn’t point to monsters or gore. Instead, he revealed that his biggest fear going into the movie was becoming a father for the first time.
“The number one fear I had going into this was the fear of being a father for the first time,” Wingard said.
Fatherhood, he explained, unlocked an entirely new collection of fears because he was suddenly responsible for another person both emotionally and physically.
That became one of the ideas he wanted to explore through Onslaught.
But Wingard also drew inspiration from fears that had already influenced his filmmaking. After making You’re Next, which was inspired in part by his fear of home invasions, Onslaught allowed him to explore another very real threat: random gun violence.
The result is particularly evident in the film’s gas station sequence.
Wingard deliberately strips away the movie’s usual fun and frenetic energy during the scene. There is no music, and the sound design becomes deliberately realistic.
“For a minute we put the fun on pause,” Wingard explained.
The goal was to make the sequence feel less like a stylized genre set piece and more like something that could actually happen.
Wingard wanted the moment to serve as “a time stamp of now” — a reminder of the frightening reality outside the movie’s larger-than-life premise.
That balance was important to him. Onslaught is designed to be an entertaining, high-octane genre movie, but Wingard didn’t want the violence to feel meaningless.
“If you’re going to make a good, kind of A+ B horror film, you need to do something that the audience also does take seriously,” he said.
Dan Stevens Found the Humanity in Onslaught’s Monster
Dan Stevens takes Onslaught in a completely different direction.
His character is deeply disturbing, but Stevens wasn’t interested in simply playing him as an evil villain. Instead, he explored the character’s belief that his work is ultimately serving a greater good.
Stevens explained that his character comes from a legacy of “nefarious scientists” continuing a larger program, creating a devotion to the work that makes his actions even more complicated.
There is a genuine passion behind what he is doing — even if the audience is horrified by the results.
That contradiction became key to Stevens’ performance.
And then there was the transformation.
Stevens revealed that he spent four hours every day in the prosthetics chair, with weeks of preparation devoted to testing different facial pieces, facial hair, noses and eyes before the final look was chosen.
“I love nothing more than transforming completely,” Stevens said.
The process ultimately helped him disappear into the character, with Stevens crediting head of makeup JQ and the prosthetics team for bringing the transformation to life.
But perhaps the most interesting part of Stevens’ approach was his belief that even the movie’s most disgusting characters need some form of humanity.
He recalled advice from an actor friend: the more you love an evil character, the more evil they can ultimately appear.
That philosophy informed his work with Wingard.
“There was something about the way that Adam and I created [the character] that we did kind of love him,” Stevens explained. “As disgusting and weird as he is.”
For Stevens, finding something to love in the character wasn’t about excusing his actions. It was about treating him as a complete creation rather than simply labeling him a monster.
