Ash & Dust

What can I say? This film made absolutely no sense at all, the synopsis says 2 couples dig up a box and get involved with a criminal element. The whole film made no sense, someone gets shot who I couldn't make any connection with then another and another.

It was an absolute joke, all I will say is it was like a box of angry frogs.

I have it a 2 rating because I'm sitting here watching it in the UKs hottest day on record and this has snow in it which is kinda cooling me a little.

Avoid this if you can, poorly written and directed.

Watching this movie was such a frustrating and ultimately fruitless endeavor. There were so many things going on, very little dialogue to explain it, and not enough of what was going on was interesting enough to keep even the most patient viewer connected. (FYI, I contemplated turning it off at the 20 minute mark, then again at the 40 minute mark.) It is one of those films that aims to be more than what it is, but the talent behind it just isn't cohesive enough and at such different levels, what you ended up getting was a movie that wanted to be and could have been something interesting, but ends up falling flat on its face.

I'm not going to go into details about the film itself, but for a story about revenge and why people embark on it, there were maybe 20 lines of dialogue throughout its entire running time. When someone did speak, the acting was often stilted and just plain bad, like someone was reading from a script. The dialogue was simple and had very little nuance, and made the movie that much worse.

Perhaps it might have been an even better movie if no one had spoken at all.

The two sole high points of the film are the cinematography and the soundtrack. The movie is beautiful, with some great shots of the wilderness and some really dynamic framing. Likewise, the soundtrack was haunting and really pulled you into the events taking place, even when there really wasn't anything going on.

Overall, this movie frustrated me, to the point where I wish I hadn't even bothered watching it. It was just a slog to get through, and I'd discourage anyone from even thinking about giving this one a go.

Avoid it completely.

It took me three tries to watch this movie, it was very boring and took almost 30 mins to get to something that was worth listening to. And the quality is almost low budget.

This feels like another vanity project, with a well worn plot that they actually still manage to mess up.... There is absolutely no depth to any of the Characters, so much so that you do not feel any empathy for anyone. Nothing is explained, and the story goes nowhere, and actively ignores what may have been interesting sub-plots....

Ash & Dust takes the murder revenge story and paints it in three primary colors: white for the absence of hope, black for the finality of death, and red for the bloody consequences of fury. There are no zippy comic relief one liners, no superhuman feats of courage or strength, no Hail Mary miraculous escapes, no perfunctory child in distress, no super villain to outsmart, and no hope in hell for salvation. Made even more melancholoc by a perfectly scored soundtrack, Ash & Dust accomplishes something rarely seen in today's eggshell sidestepping movies, a fierce and unapologetic depiction of death.