Ash is the new movie from musical artist, Flying Lotus. As someone who enjoys his music, I thought I would check out his movie despite the online thoughts of this movie. Before I get fully into this review, I am not a fan of sci-fi. While I do really enjoy movies such as Dune Part Two or The Creator, I also don’t like such beloved movies such as Star Wars or even the first Alien. But what drew me into this movie other than the director, was the fact it was a horror movie as well, and Aaron Paul from Breaking Bad is an actor in this movie.
Anyway, Ash is about a woman that wakes up in her space station to find her crew all dead. And while the story plays out a chain of events happen. In concept that sounds really cool and like something that could be awesome. However, I personally feel like we didn’t we got the best version of this movie, even if this movie is technically great.
Starting off with the positives, this movie is visually pleasing, whether it’s the effects or the lighting or just the quality of the picture, it looks great. The neon lighting, and the jaw dropping effects are phenomenal. The biggest plus I can give to this movie is the score. The score elevates the movie so well, which isn’t surprising considering that Flying Lotus is a musical artist. I also think acting wise, Eiza González does a great job in her role as Riya. Those are the positives.
With the mixed, I think Aaron Paul’s performance is very 50/50. As sometimes he’ll do a great job in one scene and a decent job in the next. I’m also mixed on the editing on the movie as that’s how the jump scares are. The jump scares never scared me but made me look at the great effects. With these being what I’m mixed on, I feel more negative on these things than positive, but who knows? Those could be positives.
With the negatives, this movie feels like a shorter and worse version of what could have been, as this movie, when watching, feels like they’re trying to get through the story as fast as they can. Even though I want a longer version, I would like for the dialogue to be fixed as the words sound robotic. Even if they had better actors to say the lines, I don’t think that would help. Speaking of the acting isn’t great. while I can assume the budget wasn’t high, some better actors could’ve been picked to make this movie feel more believable. This movie also takes a lot of inspiration from Alien. it’s not just wearing inspirations on your sleeve, as with this movie, it’s wearing it all over their body.
But overall, Ash is a movie I hope finds a fan base. While the movie isn’t for me, I could see this having a fanbase that loves it. I’ll give this movie a 2/5 and hope that you’ll check it out to see if it’s for you.
