ASH. An Impressive Tribute to VHS-Era Science Fiction

Ash stands out very favorably against the current overproduction of science fiction. A young woman named Riya suddenly wakes up inside a scientific research station on the distant planet K.O.I.-442 (known as Ash). She doesn’t remember who she is, how she got there, or what happened during the past 48 hours—but the mutilated corpses of other astronauts lying around, a blaring alarm, and repeated warnings about low oxygen levels clearly indicate that unimaginable chaos has taken place. Soon after, an astronaut named Brion arrives, having flown in from a station orbiting the planet after receiving an SOS signal. He and Riya try to piece together what happened—and it turns out the crew was on an exploratory mission that uncovered signs of terraforming on the planet.

The investigation of a well-like structure triggered a series of tragic events. With oxygen supplies rapidly running out, Riya and Brion must leave the station within twelve hours—but an alien lifeform on Ash has no intention of letting them escape. A race against time begins. Steven Ellison, also known as Flying Lotus, is considered one of the most talented music producers of his generation, as evidenced by his acclaimed albums released through Warp Records, including Los Angeles (2008), Cosmogramma (2010), Until the Quiet Comes (2012), and You’re Dead! (2014).

The American artist is also connected to cinema and television—not only composing music for Adult Swim and films like Blade Runner Black Out 2022 (2017) by Shinichirō Watanabe and Perfect (2018) by Eddie Alcazar, but also directing the surreal horror film Kuso (2017) and a segment in the anthology V/H/S/99 (2022). Ash, written by Jonni Remmler, is Ellison’s second full-length feature as a solo director; he also composed the soundtrack and played a minor role as the ill-fated astronaut Shawn.

The film was shot in an abandoned factory in New Zealand and stars Eiza González, Aaron Paul, Iko Uwais, Beulah Koale, and Kate Elliott. Ellison openly admits that Ash was inspired by the music videos of Chris Cunningham and Spike Jonze, the games Dead Space and Resident Evil, and films such as Alien (1979) by Ridley Scott, The City of Lost Children (1995) by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, and The Thing (1982) by John Carpenter (to whom he directed a special thanks in the closing credits—along with Terrence Malick and the late Ryūichi Sakamoto). There are also shades of Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010) and Mandy (2018) by Panos Cosmatos—other outstanding films that pay homage to VHS-era horror and sci-fi. However, it turns out that many reviewers either fail to recognize or simply disregard these references, often resulting in low ratings. Some can’t even accurately identify the film’s setting, which only shows how carelessly they watch movies—and how little qualification they have to assess them fairly. So let no one be misled by casual moviegoers or the harsh ratings on film sites—Ash is a much better film than the scores on Filmweb or IMDb.com suggest. It’s impressive how Ellison manages to extract so much from what is, at its core, a rather conventional plot (and even throws in a few surprising twists); how skillfully he builds tension and a suffocating sense of dread and claustrophobia; how effectively he uses space, color, sound, and mood.

The film’s dense, hallucinatory, and hypnotic atmosphere is one of its greatest strengths, and it never hides its sources of inspiration. Comparisons to the Alien franchise are inevitable, but Ash is a far more interesting film than Ridley Scott’s recent additions to the series—the uneven Prometheus (2012) and the utterly nonsensical Alien: Covenant (2017). In an age of generic sci-fi, every film that dares to be different is welcome—and Ash is exactly that kind of film.