Remember the name Flying Lotus. While he’s known in the music world, he’s on course to become the next big name in horror movies after Ash. Not since Jordan Peele blew away the world with his directorial debut, Get Out, has a director made such a grand opening statement in the genre.
How best can one describe Ash? Think of it being the premise of Memento via the way of The Thing but filled with the demonic visuals and setting of Event Horizon. The story proposes a mystery right from the start. On a spaceship, Eiza González’s Riya wakes up to find injuries on herself and that her crew is dead. She receives momentary flashbacks of nightmarish events, but she can’t remember what happened to her or the crew. Matters take another turn when a man named Brion (Aaron Paul) comes on board, telling her that they know each other and offering his assistance to piece together what went down on the mission.
This sci-fi horror keeps you wondering
Jonni Remmler’s script keeps everyone guessing from the start, setting up all kinds of trust issues between the characters and audience. Can Brion be trusted since he just miraculously appeared on the scene after a disaster? What about Riya and her ability to be a reliable narrator with memory issues? Or could one of the other crew members be behind this?
That’s the fun part about this sci-fi horror, since it doesn’t become clear until the third act what’s actually happening. Instead, it turns into a story where the filmmakers entice you with another piece of the jigsaw puzzle every few minutes. In typical human fashion, you try to guess what the final image looks like with as minimal pieces as possible, but your patience will be rewarded in the end if you collect all the necessary pieces and put them together. While the twist isn’t revolutionary – and it’s something that’s been done in horror before – it’s satisfying to finally figure out the full story here.
Eiza González and Aaron Paul add to the mystery
None of this would matter if the leads aren’t convincing. Fortunately, in Eiza González and Aaron Paul, Ash possesses two cerebral performers who give nothing away. Both Riya and Brion veer between trust and distrust on multiple occasions, as it’s never clear who might be lying and who is telling the truth here. González, in particular, continues to make her case for becoming the next big A-lister in Hollywood, as she carves out another outstanding performance in a tricky story that could have gone sideways with the wrong actor in the lead.
In the flashback sequences, viewers also meet Riya’s crew: Iko Uwais’ Adhi, Beulah Koale’s Kevin, Kate Elliott’s Clarke, and Flying Lotus’ Davis. While these characters never receive the same amount of screen time as Riya and Brion, they hold important supporting roles. Flying Lotus also presents them in a way that makes you wonder if one of them could be behind this big mystery. It’s like Cluedo in space here, and everyone’s a suspect!
Flying Lotus must be a John Carpenter fan
In terms of visual and audio, Flying Lotus sends a statement to all these big studios and streamers wasting hundreds of millions of dollars to deliver cinematic turds. Visually, he combines both practical and special effects to create a believable version of space and the horrors encountered there. Despite all the advancements in technology, there’s simply nothing like seeing a grotesque creature in the body horror style of John Carpenter’s The Thing, and Flying Lotus obviously appreciates this sentiment too. The filmmaker clearly loves the symbolic nature of neon lights and how they relate to a mystery at play, as he oscillates between the different colors to indicate the shift in mood.
As an accomplished musician, Flying Lotus also tackles the soundtrack. He pays tribute to John Carpenter once again through an atmospheric synth score style and puts his trust in minimalism to create the desired effect. Put the visuals and audio together, and you have the recipe for an unforgettable sci-fi horror.
Is Ash worth watching?
Hell yes! Instead of Netflix giving over $300 million to the Russos to fart into a bag and deliver The Electric State, it could give a third of that budget to someone like Flying Lotus to produce an infinitely better sci-fi offering. It’s remarkable what Flying Lotus and his team did with Ash with a much lower budget than most Netflix films. This is the type of horror that could easily turn into a franchise or become a standalone cult classic. Take a bow!
The Review
Ash
Ash could easily be the horror event of the year
Review Breakdown
-
Verdict
