Aliens have invaded SXSW with a number of new titles befitting the theme at this 12 months’s pageant, and director Flying Lotus‘ Ash actually 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 reminiscence of who she is, how she bought there or why her whole crew has been slaughtered. When her crew mate Brion (Aaron Paul) solutions a misery name from their orbiting area station, issues begin coming into focus. As the pc warns her of an uncommon lifeform.
The film wastes no time moving into the motion as we open on a bloodied Riya waking up with precisely the identical quantity of information as now we have in regards to the bloody chaos surrounding her. The bottom’s pc system malfunctions, constructing the stress by sound and lighting because the oxygen provide quickly drops.
Not far beneath the stylized nod to extraterrestrial horror are not-so-subtle themes of people colonizing land the place we don’t belong, radicalizing its folks by disinformation, and the final silencing of disenfranchised people on the lookout for hope whereas pitting them in opposition to one another to distract from the true menace.
“Let’s not f*ck it up this time,” Riya says in a single flashback of idealistic occasions along with her crew as they imagined what can be their “one small step” quote amongst discovering their new residence.
In the meantime, Riya doesn’t bear in mind Earth in any respect, whereas those that overlook historical past are certain to repeat it. Her flashbacks current all through the movie as these trippy visions with a discombobulating first-person POV.
Lotus delivers loads of robust nods to Alien, serving nearly as an homage to the 1979 movie that redefined the horror sub-genre, in addition to a splash of John Carpenter’s The Factor (1982) and many extra that I’ll depart to the better-qualified horror nerds to smell out.
The rating consists by Lotus, a music producer in his personal proper, offering a vibe-y expertise complemented by a visually hanging technicolor depiction of outer area and a blue desert planet that would maintain humanity’s future … if somebody hadn’t gotten there first.
Though among the results look like AI-generated, it nearly seems like a aware selection to enhance Lotus’ imaginative and prescient of intergalactic horror, wherein it’s usually troublesome to tell apart actuality from a nightmarish fever dream.
A follow-up to his 2017 anthology Kuso, Lotus has discovered his Ripley in González, who undoubtedly earns her “last lady” badge with this position, serving a fantastically terrified and impassioned efficiency, full with a high-octane battle sequence or two and loads of darkish relevance.
Title: Ash
Pageant: SXSW (Headliner)
Distributor: RLJE + Shudder
Launch date: March 21, 2025
Director: Flying Lotus
Screenwriter: Jonni Remmler
Forged: Eiza González, Aaron Paul, Flying Lotus, Iko Uwais, Kate Elliott, Beulah Koale
Working time: 1 hr 35 minutes
