Ash

Ash (2025) starring Eiza Gonzales and Aaron Paul, is a low budget horror / sci-fi film directed by Flying Lotus. In his debut directoral effort, Flying Lotus delivers a film that is as innovative as a mouldy bologna sandwich. Everything you see here has already been done better, with a much larger budget and crew. I was shocked at the quality of the film, which hearkens back to cheap, Saturday afternoon, B- movie television fare.

If you're looking for film school quality - as in Cinematography 101 - the movie easily hits its mark. There is something very polished about the delivery if you're not expecting professional results. If you're expecting a great, thematically developed, theater-ready and technically excellent feature movie, you're in for a disappointment.

The actors don't have much to do in this film, other than deliver the basics of happiness, anger, confusion and rage. There was likely a bit of time in the makeup chair to create a semblance of Body-horror - but the layers here aren't deep at all.

Post production actually does a passable job with trippy, acid-inspired flashbacks and special effects. The color palette is very Nicolas Winding Refin-inspired. If you need an out-of-body experience, a matinee of Ash might serve you well.

Though I could not enjoy this film, I am definitely interested to see the next project Flying Lotus undertakes - the creative potential is there, once you trundle past the tired, overused tropes, and I saw a fair number of fans in my theater's audience.

If you're looking for blockbuster, transcendental acting, directing and cinematography, skip this movie. If you enjoy tropes exploding from the screen in sloppy, gory, messy and predictable fashion, you may enjoy Ash. I, unfortunately, did not.

5 out of 10 stars.

• Chipper F. Xavier, Esq.

Why is this movie edited so poorly...lts Iike we see the same scene in 4 different ways....they have multiple flash backs for all the same scenes, and by the fourth flashback, you already knew what was going on...this have amazing visuals, and amazing fx, but it just didn't do anything for me...MANDY is a much better film that has depth and visuals to make you invested...this movie just didn't push the needle and by the end, i was bored...the Iast 5 minutes were awesome, everything else besides the visuals were mediocre sadly...Shudder is usually hit or miss so I wasn't shocked to see their name on the opening credits...i went in blind, and left bored.

It is indeed visually alluring, and I admire their passionate experimentations with the colour palette. Not the visual effects, though, I mean the CGI, as they certainly came off cheap and underdeveloped in some places.

However, if we keep all these flashy technicalities on one side and start judging the movie from a cinematic standpoint, shortcomings begin to emerge to the surface.

First and foremost, there is limited time allotted to explore the 'reason' behind the mysterious circumstances on the ship. Although there are a couple of scenes to depict the 'otherworldly' beings, they fail to meet the inherent necessities of the script.

Secondly, the majority of the characters are merely used as fillers, with Eisa and Aaron shouldering the burden for the most part.

And could someone please tell me why and how they managed to convince Iko Uwais to play such a trivial character?

Was it just to indulge him in a hand-to-hand fight scene that lasted for like two minutes?

Criminal!

The production value is high, the actors are solid, the sets are fine. But this is has got to be the most overused clichéd script I have ever seen.

The scifi elements are just enough to create a coherent plot and unify all the elements. But it is incredibly boring slog fest, which they have tried to make more intelligent by the most overused trope of the main character losing their memory.

I think this is the wave of AI generated scripts. This simply has no value, there are so many better movies who have almost the identical plot.

It only requires two movie they stole from, and I cant really call it influenced. I have no idea how something can simply rip off the idea from "The thing", mix it with a bit of "Alien" to pad out the scenes, and actually manage to get it made.

These are two of the most most influential movies in the genre, didn't someone notice how it was such as blatent and poor ripoff.

Is an interesting idea, some cool concepts, stunning imagery, lot of great pratical effects and stunts, but it just drags on.

Elza Gonzales and Aron Paul are great actors, but they have no chemistry or charisma in this, specially to drag a whole movie, and the dialogues doesn't help at all, Iko Uwais is straight up wasted. It just feels like they got this concept for a short or something, and some executives made then stretch it into a movie... So this is what we got, but hey, at least they did the right thing about the expositions, which is to show stuff, instead of telling through narration.