Aliens have invaded SXSW with multiple new titles befitting the theme at this year’s festival, and director Flying Lotus‘ Ash certainly serves a cosmic horror that’s out of this world.
Eiza González stars as astronaut Riya, who wakes up on a distant planet with no memory of who she is, how she got there or why her entire crew has been slaughtered. When her crew mate Brion (Aaron Paul) answers a distress call from their orbiting space station, things start coming into focus. As the computer warns her of an unusual lifeform.
The movie wastes no time getting into the action as we open on a bloodied Riya waking up with exactly the same amount of info as we have about the bloody chaos surrounding her. The base’s computer system malfunctions, building the tension through sound and lighting as the oxygen supply rapidly drops.
Not far beneath the stylized nod to extraterrestrial horror are not-so-subtle themes of humans colonizing land where we don’t belong, radicalizing its people through disinformation, and the general silencing of disenfranchised folks looking for hope while pitting them against each other to distract from the real threat.
“Let’s not f*ck it up this time,” Riya says in one flashback of idealistic times with her crew as they imagined what would be their “one small step” quote among discovering their new home.
Meanwhile, Riya doesn’t remember Earth at all, whereas those who forget history are bound to repeat it. Her flashbacks present throughout the film as these trippy visions with a discombobulating first-person POV.
Lotus delivers plenty of strong nods to Alien, serving almost as an homage to the 1979 film that redefined the horror sub-genre, as well as a dash of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and plenty more that I’ll leave to the better-qualified horror nerds to sniff out.
The score is composed by Lotus, a music producer in his own right, providing a vibe-y experience complemented by a visually striking technicolor depiction of outer space and a blue desert planet that could hold humanity’s future … if someone hadn’t gotten there first.
Although some of the effects appear to be AI-generated, it almost feels like a conscious choice to complement Lotus’ vision of intergalactic horror, in which it’s often difficult to distinguish reality from a nightmarish fever dream.
A follow-up to his 2017 anthology Kuso, Lotus has found his Ripley in González, who definitely earns her “final girl” stripes with this role, serving a beautifully terrified and impassioned performance, complete with a high-octane fight sequence or two and plenty of dark relevance.
Title: Ash
Festival: SXSW (Headliner)
Distributor: RLJE + Shudder
Release date: March 21, 2025
Director: Flying Lotus
Screenwriter: Jonni Remmler
Cast: Eiza González, Aaron Paul, Flying Lotus, Iko Uwais, Kate Elliott, Beulah Koale
Running time: 1 hr 35 mins