My quick rating – 5.2/10. In Ash, Eiza González wakes up alone on a distant planet, and it’s immediately clear she’s having a very bad morning. No coffee, no clean socks, and oh yeah—her crew has been brutally murdered. Welcome to space horror, where the silence is deafening and the plot’s holding on by duct tape and alien goo.
Directed by Flying Lotus (yes, the musician—and apparently now part-time intergalactic tour guide), Ash boldly steps into the void of sci-fi horror with a heavy nod to The Thing, minus the creeping paranoia and clever ambiguity. Instead, we get a fairly routine “humans find alien tech, everything goes sideways” setup, with far fewer flamethrowers and far more artsy flashbacks.
Riya (González) does a decent job playing the lone survivor trying to CSI her way through the carnage, though the script doesn’t give her much to work with emotionally—unless you count staring blankly into the void. Occasionally, she remembers to be terrified. Occasionally, so do we.
Iko Uwais pops up, giving fans of The Raid a moment of excitement, only to remind us he’s not here to fight twenty guys with a wrench this time. He’s underused, underscored, and underwhelming—but hey, he looks great in space gear.
Visually, Ash is all over the star map. Some scenes feel richly textured and atmospheric, making you wish the whole movie looked like this. Others feel like we dropped into a mid-tier sci-fi video game cutscene from 2011. The effects are uneven, like someone spilled space glitter on an indie film budget.
Where the movie shines (or flickers, anyway) is in its final flashback—ironically the only flashback that truly earns its runtime. It’s emotional, well-shot, and tonally what the rest of the movie could have been. Unfortunately, to get there, we wade through recycled dreamscapes and “Wait, did we see this memory already?” territory that starts to feel more like déjà meh.
The score, of course, is bumping—Flying Lotus knows how to create a vibe—but even pulsating synths can’t force tension where none exists. The horror is more suggested than shown, and while restraint can be a virtue, here it just feels like the film forgot it was supposed to be scary.
Still, there’s something promising lurking beneath the cosmic dust. Lotus clearly has an eye and ear for atmosphere, and with tighter editing and a story that doesn’t treat flashbacks like popcorn, his next film might stick the landing.
For now, Ash is space horror-lite: visually interesting at times, occasionally creepy, and mostly content to orbit around better films rather than boldly going where no director’s gone before. Bring snacks. Maybe caffeine too.
