Ash: scifi film review (video).

When your spaceship is mysteriously slaughtered, your crew reduced to chunky salsa, and you’ve woken up with a headache and the memory of a goldfish after a stag weekend, who do you call? Well, Aaron Paul, obviously. Or at least, that’s the logic in Flying Lotus’s new sci-fi horror, Ash, a film that tackles deep existential dread, memory loss, paranoia, and monsters made primarily of screaming rage and gloopy viscera.

Directed by experimental musician and now director Flying Lotus (proving once again there’s nothing musicians love more than making films where things go spectacularly wrong in space), Ash stars Eiza González as Riya, the unfortunate astronaut with no memory and even fewer surviving crewmates. González spends much of the film looking bewildered and terrified, perfectly capturing the feeling of anyone who’s ever woken up on a friend’s sofa after too many drinks the night before, albeit with far higher stakes.

Aaron Paul turns up as Brion, the alleged “rescuer” who pops onto the station after receiving Riya’s distress signal. Paul is predictably twitchy, permanently looking like he’s just realised he’s forgotten to turn off the gas hob back on Earth. Suspiciously shifty or reassuringly dependable—take your pick—but it’s Aaron Paul, so he inevitably looks seconds away from a complete existential breakdown. His character Brion carries the aura of a man who genuinely thought a career in space rescue would involve significantly fewer rage monsters and more heroic selfies for Instagram.

Then there’s the supporting crew, including Iko Uwais, presumably cast to ensure at least someone on board could convincingly karate-chop an alien if required. Meanwhile, Flying Lotus himself pops up as Davis—proof positive that directors secretly yearn to experience their own creations firsthand, even if it means being torn limb from limb under cinematic strobe lighting.

Set aboard a remote space station with corridors that look suspiciously like re-decorated bits of Wellington, New Zealand (where filming took place, presumably because Middle-earth was fully booked), Ash plunges straight into the territory of films like Alien and Event Horizon. But what sets this one apart, aside from a cast that looks perpetually about to panic, is its rather charming commitment to sheer, unrelenting weirdness.

Nightmarish hallucinations punctuate the action, each more unsettling than the last—visions so unpleasantly visceral that audiences would do well not to consume anything too heavy beforehand, especially if their third eye tends to be sensitive. It’s like Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor but amped up with Flying Lotus’s unique flair for visually assaulting your retinas. Blood appears as thick as crude oil; rage-fuelled creatures shriek beneath moodily blinking red lights, and the film’s music spikes dramatically every time anyone blinks suspiciously. It’s absolutely bonkers, and undeniably thrilling for precisely that reason.

Reviews have been suitably mixed-but-positive. IndieWire’s Katie Rife called it “freaky,” and Zachary Lee of RogerEbert.com admitted it wasn’t reinventing the wheel but praised its razor-sharp execution as “a B-movie operating at the highest levels of craftsmanship.” A solid endorsement if you fancy a bit of sci-fi horror escapism that doesn’t pretend it’s reinventing Tarkovsky.

Here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we appreciate a sci-fi flick that knows exactly what it is—mad, unsettling, and unpretentious enough to throw Aaron Paul into space without even a faint whiff of irony. So, buckle up, turn off your brain (or risk losing your memories along with González), and let the nightmarish madness wash over you. Just don’t trust anyone who conveniently appears after everyone else is dead—that’s never ended well in cinema history.

And remember: in space, no one can hear you ask, “Hang on, why is Aaron Paul acting suspicious again?”