Ash

Ash, the newest visual feast from innovative composer-turned-director Flying Lotus, is nothing short of spectacular to absorb. At nearly every turn, a synthesizer buzzes or a vivid color array bursts onto the scene, but sensory pleasures only carry a movie so far. By the end of its 95-minute runtime, Ash will worm its way into your brain, sure, but leave much of its sordid alien world and the human crew inhabiting it narratively wanting.

Eiza Gonzalez stars as Riya, an explorer of the mission crew F7, who sets out from a polluted Earth to find a world viable for humanity. They find K.O.I.-442, also known as Ash. Riya awakes injured and addled with amnesia, mysteriously surrounded by the dead bodies of her crew members save for Clarke (Kate Elliott). Eventually, Brion (Aaron Paul), supervisor of the Orbital space station monitoring the F7 ground crew, finds Riya, and the two begin a desperate effort to escape Ash before their oxygen depletes.

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Psychological horror is at the forefront of this sumptuous sci-fi story. As Riya attempts to unravel the cause of her amnesia and what happened at the research station, she sees the faces of her dead crew members within its shadowy corners and experiences ambiguous flashbacks. Flying Lotus handles these initial moments with precision, and the first half of the film contains some genuinely spine-tingling moments. In its back half, however, when similar scenes arise, they feel redundant and hardly more revelatory. Still, intercut shots of the F7 crew members and their gooey, dissolving faces twisted in horror never get boring.

Without a doubt, Ash’s visual effects, sound design, and score are its most appealing and well-constructed elements. From the opening shot, Flying Lotus establishes and continues to emphasize his uniquely striking style, incorporating an alien blue tone as the film’s general palette and contrasting it with primary colors and a magenta reminiscent of films like Mandy and Color Out of Space. And much like his tremendously weird debut Kuso and V/H/S/99 segment Ozzy’s Dungeon, the practical and computer-generated effects of Ash are impressive.

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Fans of the enigmatic creative will know that Flying Lotus is a talented musician and composer, and this is evident in Ash. Discordant electronic tracks correspond to the weird alien planet on which Riya and Brion find themselves stranded, and the music pulses excitedly while carrying the film’s more action-packed sequences.

Moments of Ash resemble modern and classic sci-fi horrors, including Color Out of Space, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and, in particular, The Thing, which bears many conceptual and visual similarities. While some could see these similarities as homage, the story feels too comparable to tried-and-true sci-fi horror tales of old—a barebones script of stranded survivors on an unknown planet fighting a sneaky alien organism. Sounds familiar?

Writer Jonni Remmler and Flying Lotus try to inject some personality into Ash’s characters, primarily Riya, and Eiza Gonzalez does a decent job portraying her amnesia-ridden fear and confusion with a healthy mix of badass female aggression. But while there are attempts to shine a light on Riya’s and crew member Kevin’s (Beulah Koale) subtle relationship and the personalities of the others, also featuring Iko Uwais as Adhi and Flying Lotus himself as Davis, these attempts are underbaked. Even Paul’s character, Brion, largely serves as a plot device, and his acting mirrors that. Overall, the otherwise intriguing cast is disappointingly underutilized.

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Ash is a justifiably polarizing film, as its widespread mixed reviews confirm. It is captivating to look at and listen to but frustratingly plain and familiar on the page. Even the finale, which features a gnarly creature design and an exciting last-ditch bid for survival, is relatively predictable. For the average viewer, Ash is arguably less “weird” than some of Flying Lotus’s other works and therefore more accessible, and they may be less strict. Sci-fi horror enthusiasts, on the other hand, will find plenty to like here but may agree that the narrative is frustratingly repetitious.

Ash is now streaming on Shudder.

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