perisho

Ash is not a groundbreaking film and it's not a high budget Hollywood film. It is a competent science fiction film made for half a million bucks in about a month.

So much of science fiction is either war in space or soap opera in space or political thriller in space and so on. Unfortunately most of it also dumb and/or cheesy.

Ash doesn't insult you, it has a competent story and mystery, decent acting and production and while it won't win any effects awards the effects range from serviceable to pretty darn good.

I wouldn't call it "smart science fiction" but it's definitely NOT dumb, it has something besides fighting and fing. Some characters and relationships are a bit under developed but at this budget level I can't complain too much. Most of the actors probably had to go to their day job.

If you wish there was more decent low to mid budget science fiction that doesn't insult your intelligence you might want to give this one a watch.

I know about the idea that this movie is about repressed gender identity before I watched it. If that was the intention of the creators they completely missed the mark. Neither Owen nor Maddy gave any indication they were unhappy in their own skin, well, at least gender wise. Owen had trouble with the intensity of human interaction but never gave any indication he was unhappy with his gender.

The set up was pretty good, but the second half of the movie was just a slog. It seemed like they got half way though the movie and realized it needed to be much longer to be a real movie so they had Maddy deliver her story as s l o w l y a s p o s s i b l e and threw in a couple of bad songs and a cover of a Smashing Pumpkins song that was already perfect when Smashing Pumpkins did it. (do not EVER cover smashing pumpkins, ever, they already made several perfect albums and you cant POSSIBLY add anything or improve on it)

If this really was meant to be a metaphor for gender identity struggles it was far to subtle and cluttered with other themes like losing a parent young, abusive parents, mental illness, etc etc etc.

And what kind of 22 year olds think to meet at the high school? After I was 18 I never went within 500 yards of that place. In fact adults hanging around high schools is frowned upon- and for good reasons.

All in all it struck me as a bad student film made by a rich kid with good equipment and no concept of real struggle.

There are only two season of television that I am aware of that I consider almost perfect science fiction. One is season one of Altered Carbon and the other is season one of Scavengers Reign.

Of the two Scavengers Reign is slightly better in my opinion. It won't be everybody's taste of course, but for those that like deep science fiction that asks questions, and marvels at existence this is one of those rare pieces of media that absolutely NAILS IT.

You can tell that everybody who worked on this show sweated over every detail and spent a great deal of time thinking about every nuance. That is so rare when you can make just as much money blowing stuff up with CGI on screen.

I really hope a season two with the same people is in the works.