MOVIE REVIEW – A new planet, same old nightmares: Ash is Flying Lotus’s visually dazzling, narratively hollow remix of Alien tropes. Eiza González stars as the lone survivor of an interstellar massacre in a film that serves up its boldest ideas as retina-melting visuals, not through its recycled plot points. We watched Ash on Amazon Prime.

Critics throw around “mind-blowing” too often when talking sci-fi, but with Ash, the phrase might actually stick. While the script barely holds together, the movie opens with an unforgettable sequence: a whirling galaxy of chaos spins inside an astronaut’s mind, before the camera pulls out through her pupil to reveal Riya Ortiz’s (Eiza González) panicked face. Moments later, we’re treated to a gruesome montage of every crew member with their skulls caved in or heads exploded like meat-filled balloons.

How did they all die? Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. Skip ahead 90 minutes and a jarring, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stinger buried mid-credits caps it all off. In between, Ash sticks surprisingly close to genre convention, especially considering it’s from the same twisted brain behind Kuso and the grotesque Ozzy’s Dungeon segment in V/H/S/99. This time, it’s a neon-slick, giallo-inspired tribute to extraterrestrial horror, from Alien to Event Horizon, where the alien menace behaves predictably, if rarely rationally.

Eye-Gouging Visuals and Razor-Sharp Cheekbones

The film’s visuals are practically weaponized—jagged, aggressive, and likely to haunt your dreams. González’s Riya is as much an aesthetic centerpiece as a protagonist, her face sharper than most of the tools she uses to survive (which include a butcher knife, a scalpel, and, yes, bonsai scissors). Riya wakes up with a gash on her head and no memory, quickly discovering the mutilated bodies of Kevin (Beulah Koale), Adhi (Iko Uwais), and Davis (played by Flying Lotus himself).

While she investigates, the ship’s computer issues ominous alerts in English—though the surgery bot only speaks Japanese. Enter Brion (Aaron Paul), who claims to be hailing from a nearby station. Meanwhile, Clarke (Kate Elliott), the only character referred to by last name, is still MIA—so she must be the killer, right? If you’re buying into that twist, or even care, you’re watching the wrong movie. Ash is more haunted maze than film, all jump-scares and jarring noise, with Flying Lotus laying down the soundtrack like a DJ scoring your nightmares.

Sights, Sounds, and Shock Value

FlyLo reportedly played music on set to set the tone, but despite looking like a surreal concept album, the score falls flat—just mechanical pulsations and industrial clatter that’s more anxiety-inducing than anything danceable (sorry, he’s no RZA). Still, the disconnect between the soundtrack, the jagged editing by Bryan Shaw, and the endless strobe flickers create a sensory chaos that’s hard to ignore.

Several times, the film jolts us with smash cuts to screaming corpses—mutilated, mutated, and dripping with viscera. They’re the kind of horror designs you’d want to freeze-frame and inspect later, but here, they hit like a slap to the face. The first time, it’s like someone drops an anatomy textbook in your cereal. But once you recognize the pattern, the scares lose their edge.

Recycled Ideas, Refracted Through a Psychedelic Lens

Flying Lotus isn’t trying to reinvent the genre—he’s remixing it. Ash drifts toward the same warning many space horrors issue: humans can’t help but conquer, exploit, and destroy. What happens when we meet something we can’t control? Screenwriter Jonni Remmler checks all the boxes, including a sneering alien line like: “You and your kind are destined to self-destruct.” Subtle, it is not.

These clichés feel like sci-fi Mad Libs at this point—rarely provocative, never inspirational (and yes, people still leave trash in movie theaters). But Lotus has a secret weapon: DP Richard Bluck, a visual effects veteran who turns Ash into a widescreen spectacle. The planet Ash (yes, that’s its name) is a violent, volcanic rock, and these ill-fated explorers, seen only in fragmented flashbacks, are awed by its harsh beauty. There are gentler ways to explore humanity’s cosmic guilt—just look at 2001: A Space Odyssey or Solaris—but this film prefers to punch you in the eyeballs, more The Thing than Tarkovsky.

The Alien’s a Letdown, But the Ride Isn’t

When the creature finally steps into view, it’s not worth the buildup. Still, it fits within the film’s fever-dream aesthetic, which includes some unforgettable imagery: Riya standing still as ash falls on her face, glowing interiors lit in red and indigo, a furious typhoon bursting from a borehole, and a grotesque parasite extraction deep within the brain. That last one? Probably the best metaphor for the film as a whole. Check your brain at the airlock, and you’ll have a great time.

– Gergely Herpai “BadSector” –