‘Ash’ Review
The combination of science fiction and horror has always been a fertile ground for film, with movies like Ridley Scott’s Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing becoming touchstones for almost every hybrid of the two genres since. It has spilled over into video games as well, with titles like Dead Space, Returnal, and The Callisto Protocol bringing big budgets to strange planets and derelict space vessels where nothing good can come from exploration. The setting is undeniably eerie and creates an inhospitable atmosphere primed for cosmic scares and the potential to venture into unknown territory to convey something aesthetically refreshing and uniquely terrifying. There’s a clear indication that Flying Lotus (Steven Ellison) understands this better than he lets on with the psychedelic and fragmented design of his latest film, Ash. An aesthetically imaginative delve into the unknown, FlyLo’s sophomore feature is a frustrating experience as its screenplay tears down the craftsmanship surrounding it. It leaves a science fiction-horror hybrid that rarely meets the quality of its myriad influences.
On a mission to find a new planet for mankind to inhabit, Riya (Eiza González) and her crew (played by Iko Uwais, Beulah Koale, Kate Elliott, and Flying Lotus) suddenly come face-to-face with unimaginable terrors during their expedition. Waking up with seemingly no recollection of the events that caused her crew to be viciously killed on a strange planet, Riya investigates her surroundings until a fateful encounter with Brion (Aaron Paul) provides hope for an escape and a chance to figure out what has happened. While Jonni Remmi’s screenplay is moving forward, Riya is constantly falling backwards into her memories and haunted by the traumatic moments she seems to have repressed. It provides a disorienting experience that relies heavily on quick cuts to faces being melted to remind of the planet's terror and a constant drip-feed of narrative tissue to connect her memories to the present and push Riya towards a path to discovering what happened.
Unfortunately, Ash falls prey to the most common science fiction blunders—most notably, that it is not as mysterious as it seems. The enigmatic presentation and fragmented narrative mirror a disoriented individual whose amnesia has explicitly masked its inception, but as audiences, we do not exist within the same vacuum. So, while the headspace of Riya is conveyed effectively, the story itself comes down to tired sci-fi tropes explained through unwieldy exposition once the overwhelming dependence on trippy visuals and, admittedly, a fantastic score from Flying Lotus cannot be stretched further. The film bathes in waves of psychedelics, and it’s difficult not to appreciate the Lovecraftian horror suddenly consuming the entire frame after a build-up of bright reds, oranges, pinks, and purples colour the planet outside the crew’s vessel. A feast for the eyes and ears, Ash is undeniably alluring, and it befits elements of its narrative. Still, it’s a sensory experience that crashes down to Earth whenever the story needs attention.
Ash is also disappointing because its stellar casting is undone by painfully boring dialogue that keeps most performances from ever feeling convincing. Very little time is spent getting to know any of the characters that Riya supposedly has relationships with, which means that what little time is given to characters has to do significant heavy lifting to keep the narrative enticing and the motivation engaging. González commits to the stress and uneasiness of her character’s predicament to deliver something that never loses the audience’s attention, but it’s always challenging to sell a character wandering alone through corridors saying, “What happened?” when the audience is already steps ahead of them. The chemistry between Paul and González is rough, though there is a distrust from the beginning that solidifies that rocky relationship early on. However, it leaves the two performances feeling alien to one another and never alleviates the audience's distrust of the character.
As much as I’d love to continue holding the torch for The Raid star, Iko Uwais, his work outside of Indonesia has let him down repeatedly. There’s just not a lot of action in the film, and the characters are simply subjects to be tortured by whatever violence ensues, leaving Uwais and much of the rest of the cast to try and salvage material that does not care about their characters more than what happens to them. The standout is Koale, whose physical presence within all the carnage is intimidating and leans into the unstoppable forces operating against the crew. However, it’s all saved for later in the film. The cast is left in the shadows until the final act, where Flying Lotus lets loose and delivers on the phantasmagoria of cosmic horror and gnarly special effects that have been anxious to emerge. It’s where the film shines brightest and almost makes up for the monotony that precedes it, but it sacrifices many interesting thematic ideas bubbling beneath the surface for something more grotesque and visceral than intellectually stimulating.
Flying Lotus continues to be an interesting stylistic director, and the pleasures of experiencing his latest trip are occasionally worth pushing through its massive dips in quality. Ash never quite sheds the feeling that it would be a very cool music video as it remixes its many influences to convey a hypnotic visual style that compliments its stellar FlyLo score. The stylistic impulses of its director are intensely felt throughout, but even at 95 minutes, Ash frequently made me wonder whether it has any original thoughts within its head or if the few inklings that manifest are merely a byproduct of amalgamating other science fiction media. It’s a surreal nightmare processed through so many influences that it wears them on its sleeve at the expense of delivering a substantial addition to the canon of media it worships. As an experiment in how much further cinema can depict the depths of madness in outer space, Ash is relatively successful. It just can’t justify why this particular expedition is worth exploring.
