Ash, The new horror sci-fi film from director Flying Lotus has all the makings of a great mystery thriller. We have an interesting setting, a cool group of characters, and a charismatic lead actress propelling the story forward. Combine this with the style and music from Flying Lotus and Ash should be a slam dunk. Unfortunately, Ash feels like a whisper of the greater movies that have come before it than a new masterpiece.

Ash begins with Riya, played by Eiza Gonzales, waking up on a distant planet with her entire crew dead. She doesn’t know who or what killed them and she’s haunted by strange visions as she stumbles around the space station house of horrors. It’s an interesting premise that gets more fleshed as we are quickly introduced to Brion played by Aaron Paul. Brion and Riya work together to try and solve this mystery while learning the truth about the alien planet where they reside.

Slow Burn

As soon as the film begins it’s easy to see Ash is brimming with style. Musician turned director Flying Lotus has bathed this film in neon reds and purples that look great on screen. The soundtrack, produced by Lotus himself, is also exceptional. It’s a strong techno-beat-influenced score that sounds a bit like Daft Punk meets Trent Reznor. The music is great on its own but there were times when the tempo and beat didn’t exactly match what was happening on screen.

Right away though it’s easy to see influences from all over film, TV, and even video games within Ash. An abandoned space station being traversed by a lone survivor is nothing new, but Ash aims to bring something original with its interesting art and sound. It’s a technique that almost works but fails because of the slow-burn narrative and lack of an interesting finale.

Foreshadowing

Ash’s runtime is barely over an hour and a half, but it still feels painfully long waiting for any sort of meaningful plot beats to happen. Most of the first and second acts are just Riya being scared and remembering tiny bits of information before the space station turned into a butcher shop. None of it is very compelling though and it makes the mystery feel secondary to the cool sounds and lights.

Both Gonzalez and Paul are doing a fine job in their role, it’s just their roles aren’t too complicated. Their entire arc is just being scared and having no idea what’s going on. Neither do we as the audience and without any character grounding us, the film kind of flounders.

Influences

Ash takes a lot of inspiration from much better films, and that may be one of its biggest flaws. There is a scene towards the beginning of the film showing the entire space station staff eating around a cafeteria table. It’s eerily similar to the opening scene in Alien and instead of feeling like a cool homage, it just reminds us how much better that film was.

There are also allusions to The Thing, Anhiliation, and even video games like Dead Space. Living up to some of these classic films is an impossible task, but when the film is constantly making you think of those masterpieces, it’s hard to not draw the comparison. Thankfully the film does finally start to pick up steam in the third act.

A Goretastic Finale

Ash has a lot of build-up to its finale and for the most part, it delivers. There are some fantastic payoffs to interesting ideas laid before and a few red herrings that are tied up nicely. There are also some out-of-left-field reveals that feel inconsequential to the plot. Mainly one. It’s hard to see coming but that’s just because there are so many other ideas Ash is playing with, that this one seems like a bit of an afterthought.

The final act is great mainly because we get to see what’s been teased throughout the film. There are hints and whispers of a bigger threat throughout and when it finally comes full circle, it’s satisfying. The issue is it takes too long to get there and it’s followed up by other reveals that don’t land as hard.

Lonely Planet

Ash is a fine movie all things considered. I love the bold choices Lotus made with his feature-length debut and it’s clear the director has some serious talent. The biggest issues I had with the film is the pacing and the script.

Ash hinges on this mystery flash-black-driven narrative. It’s a standard trope, starting with the aftermath and working through flashbacks to peel back the mystery. The problem is that Ash doesn’t benefit at all from this narrative. The reveals are all backloaded so the first two acts just feel like an overly long introduction to the action and reveal. The film may have benefited from a more straightforward narrative. The themes and ideas they are trying to get across would all be just as strong and we wouldn’t be left with this overly long intro. As it stands though, Ash is a great debut film and I’m excited to see what this director will do next with a cleaner script.