Adria Arjona gives a committed, spunky performance in Onslaught, the new film from director Adam Wingard — but the super soldier slasher, described as a decent B-movie, doesn't go hard enough and is missing some sharper weaponry.

The review situates Wingard's latest within a familiar career arc: the indie director who climbs to the A-list and then returns to their roots, carrying a wider skillset and a different perspective gained for better or worse. Working within a stricter studio system — where, as the review puts it, "the tiniest of choices being agreed upon by the largest of committees" — can be a creatively crushing experience, one that many survivors have gruesomely detailed. Yet the expansion of what a filmmaker is technically allowed to do with a bigger budget can also be instructive and enriching.

The dream scenario, the review argues, is bringing back the good and letting the bad inspire new work that makes the most of being unshackled again.

The precedents cut both ways. Neill Blomkamp followed Elysium and Chappie with the chintzy low-budget horror Demonic, easily his least effective film — and since opening his own AI "studio," the reviewer suspects "the worst is yet to come." Marc Forster, after Quantum of Solace and World War Z, made a blind Blake Lively film that, ironically, no one saw. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck travelled from the greatness of Half Nelson to the blandness of Captain Marvel to the headache of Freaky Tales.

Then there are the counterexamples. Alfonso Cuarón came back from space (Gravity) and Hogwarts (Prisoner of Azkaban) to make the hometown intimacy of Roma. Karyn Kusama brushed off the nightmare of Æon Flux with the brilliantly creepy dinner-party thriller The Invitation.

For Wingard, the question Onslaught poses is which side of that divide he lands on. The reviewer's verdict is measured: a decent B-movie, anchored by Arjona's committed performance, that never fully sharpens its blade.