Ash is the type of reboot I can get behind. While big studios talk themselves into brainless old IP, Ash walks a different road to a better conclusion. It doesn’t take much, but if you have a good general conceit, a director with a good vision for his film, a solid script and a committed cast, sometimes it can just be that simple y’all. So instead of Snow White, be on the lookout for Ash, its demented ugly stepsister on another planet.
Riya (Eiza Gonzalez) wakes up, horrified. Everyone of her crewmates are dead around her, and she has no memory of where or who she is. Brion (Aaron Paul), the space station pilot, comes down after getting an emergency beacon from Riya’s space station, hoping to learn what happened from her and get her back to safety before the damaged oxygen supply runs out.
The director of Ash is Flying Lotus. For those who don’t know, he’s a famous singer that has now dabbled a bit into filmmaking. Ash feels like a wonderful fusion of his talents. The movie’s aesthetic is early MTV John Carpenter era with little interspersals of CGI when necessary. There are lots of practical effects and sterile grayish sets with pulsating color schemes, wonderfully transplanting everyone’s mind to that era of movie, which is going for something like The Thing or Alien. Maybe because the budget was lower here, the story smartly goes for Bourne Identity in space, crossed with Event Horizon. The result is the right mixture of straightforward and just a bit trashy, fitting the movie’s style magnificently. We’re between A movie and B movie in some tweener world, taking a good mixture of the two to create something that feels new and old at the same time.
And the casting helps in that process too, giving us familiar faces but not superstars. Eiza Gonzalez has been building a resume to lead a movie like this. She’s perfect for the role, carrying large chunks of this with a host of horror centric facial expressions but also ready to kick someone’s ass if they try to take her down. Aaron Paul uses that good guy persona to disarming affect here, as we don’t really know what he’s up to until the very end. Iko Uwais and Beulah Koale especially come in for 10-20 minutes and put their cool onto the movie, giving it a little pizazz.
Movies like Ash are the mid tier stuff I wish I saw more of. I don’t always need 5 star immersive period piece Oscar bait or the latest MCU entry every weekend. I enjoy the little sojourns to the outer rim with Eiza Gonzalez and Aaron Paul. I enjoyed it so much I didn’t even miss the “Yeah bitch!” I was hoping Paul would say, because I was so locked into Flying Lotus’s first feature. Keep blooming sir! I’m excited to see what’s next!