Riya wakes in an isolated space station on a remote planet currently under exploration. She discovers the rest of the crew have been brutally murderer, and is having flashbacks that indicate she might have killed them after being attacked. She goes outside the station, there’s a thin breathable atmosphere that can support human life in the very short term, and discovers nothing. Her crew are either lying dead around the station or have disappeared out on the surface of the planet. Later Brion arrives planet side to see what has happened, and offers an exit from the surface for our put upon heroine, and naturally that doesn’t quite work out as we might have expected. Riya needs to exit stage left as she comes under attack by an alien parasite and we learn the planet may have been claimed by something other than human.

You know how a while ago I referred to The Joker as this generation’s Taxi Driver, while I had similar thoughts with Ash, the trailer definitely summoning up thoughts of Event Horizon. Mass murder in deep space, not explained, both movies requiring the viewer to immerse themselves into, infinite gore, etc etc. Well okay that’s what the trailer sort of had me thinking, about twenty minutes into the movie I realised I had this completely wrong. Rather than being the out and out horror movie that Event Horizon proved to be, Ash was more an episode in overcoming sleep deprivation. Yes, making the big comment up front, this movie redefines boredom as the viewer watches self- indulgent scene after self-indulgent scene that neither advances the plot or gives the viewer anything remotely interesting to watch.

Before continuing, Flying Lotus, really what the actual flock! Any Director taking that name deserves to have their arse kicked out from the behind the camera. Initially I thought it might be a team of directors but nope Flying is just some dude with pretty much unknown movie titles. While my country would refer to him as a complete wanker, I’m giving him a big pass as he is a musician, and those people can be as mad as cut snakes, who is slumming it behind the camera. You didn’t think I would have an opinion on the dude’s name!

Sorry for the digression there, back to the meat and three veg. There’s so many problems with this self-indulgent exercise in film making that I don’t have room to cover them all. Did I mention it’s as boring as watching paint dry? Firstly, the locations. While the outside scenes are pretty solid and interesting, we don’t get enough of them, the interior scenes in the space station are strange to say the least. We either get futuristic almost sanitised rooms along with rooms that were clearly shot in abandoned factories or the like. There’s a non-consistency in the depiction of the interiors that had me wondering if anyone had actually spent anything beyond about a minute thinking about this aspect. There’s almost a feeling that the makers of Ash thought it was unimportant, the punters won’t notice, so why bother.

There’s not much dialogue to be had with this movie, which is just as well as a lot of it is so poorly written that you are left wondering if anyone bothered to do a second draft on this aspect of the script. We get almost nonsensical musing at stages, witness the quote above, which I had at first thought taken to being poor grammar till I realised Americans, it’s always Americans when it comes to indulgent ego driven movies. We also get some voice over for the alien motivations, which are pretty much similar to what human motivations would be, therefore not really alien at all. Jesus weeps every time a by the numbers movie maker tries to be avant-garde, it doesn’t work kids, some auteurs can pull it off, for the rank and file it comes across as face palmingly bad, especially when it comes to dialogue.

At least the plotting is seemingly okay with this one, trying to find some positives kids. It starts in neutral, continues in neutral, and then finally gets into first gear before quickly ending before the overstay gets so bad the movie is kicked out on its arse. Slow burner doesn’t begin to describe this one, and no Flying Lotus trying to paste some Euro stylings on doesn’t cover the cracks Bro, even a French director wouldn’t put his hand up for this one.  

Hey I did dig the medical diagnosis machine thing, even with the weird sound over it imitated, where’s MacReady with his glass of bourbon when you need him, who needs pain killers when there’s brain surgery afoot! And the station computer voice was sort of a decent insertion, with the occasional pronouncement to drive the plot forward.

I would have liked to talk about the scare tactics in use, but besides some decent atmosphere and tension being raised at stages but not maintained, there’s not much left on the stove here. What could have been a really decent psychological horror flick lets its cat out of the bag way too soon, and any thought the viewer might have had that they were going to get a horror mystery is squashed quicker than a cockroach on a suddenly lighted room. Don’t get me started on small chick taking out large dudes, really Flying Lotus you went with that ludicrous Mary Jane trope, get your arse out of here.

To say I was disappointed with Ash would be an understatement, I was hooked by the trailer that made it look like we might be getting something a little bit special here. Unfortunately, what we get is self-indulgent navel gazing disguising itself as SciFi horror that moves slower than Jason in a thick forest, but still manages to swipe that twenty from your back pocket. To be honest I really didn’t find any redeeming features and am forcing to give this exploration in ego no recommendation to anyone. Each year we are going to have movies that fail to entertain and Ash was one of those movies, it is all a bit meh end of day.