DJ, rapper, and music video maestro Flying Lotus hits us with his feature-directing debut, a sci-fi psychodrama that strikes more than a few familiar notes.
How to watch Ash in New Zealand
Ash is now streaming in New Zealand exclusively on Amazon Prime Video.
What is Ash about?
On a space station orbiting the distant planet Ash, astronaut Riya awakes to find her entire crew utterly slaughtered, and massive holes in her memory preventing her from knowing how or by whom. As she tries to piece together recent events, a stranger named Brion suddenly shows up, having answered the distress call. But can she trust him? And what does he know about what happened?
We get this kind of sci-fi psychological horror once in a while, most of them indebted to Alien to at least some degree. Event Horizon‘s a cult classic now. The little-remembered Pandorum? Not so much. The ur-example might be hippie sci-fi Silent Running. All of that is a long way of saying we’re intrigued by the concept, though it could go either way. Still, Ash is the feature debut of renowned visualist Flying Lotus, aka Steven Ellison, so that’s interesting.
The cast of Ash
Eiza González is Riya; Aaron Paul is Brion; Iko Uwais is Adhi; Beulah Koale is Kevin; Kate Elliott is Clarke; and Flying Lotus as Davis.
Ash trailer
Why we’re excited about Ash
This sort of thing lives or dies by whatever its cool and creepy Big Idea is, and so far Ash has kept its cards pretty close to its vest in that regard. Right now its looking a bit generic, but we could be surprised. Still, we’ll always give a sci-fi thriller a chance just on general principles, and Flying Lotus having his hand on the tiller certainly makes us curious.
