Usually, when someone says that a movie is “all vibber”, they mean it as an insult. But vibber can accomplish some wonderful things: just ask Alejandro JodorowskyDario Argento, Amy Seimetz, Panos Cosmatos and now Lotus flies. Born Steven D. Bingley-Ellison claims musicians and record producer his place in the Pantheon of vibber-based filmmakers with ”Ash“A pummy psychedelic sci-fi-freakout that you don’t see as much as an experience.
Do not let the green fog is tinged with white flash and rotating cosmic openings deceive you, but intake of psychedelic drugs is not recommended before looking at this film. Like Brandon Cronenbergs ”Holder“” Ash “uses extensive cuts that violently tear through the frame, scrubbing the audience with nightly images that disarming under normal circumstances and probably soul -driving scary if one’s third eye happens to be open at that time. Think rage monsters – paved in blood that is as thick as crude oil – which screams.
I saw this movie Stone sober and caffeine enough at its world premiere at SXSW and still had trouble finding out what happened throughout it. This was true even when one of the characters explicitly explained what happened, which happens quite a lot – this is the author Jonni Remmler’s first produced script, and it shows. But there are not too many dialogue scenes, thankfully, because the heroine Riya (Eiza González) spends a lot of the film alone, walks through the shell of a ruined spaceship after wake up bluarly and bloody and tried to find out who she is and who all these dead bodies around her used to be.
Then Aaron Paul shows up as a former invisible member of the ship’s crew, and if you have ever seen a “foreign” movie you will know immediately that this guy should not be trusted. The series “Alien” is a prominent influence on “Ash”, which shows everywhere from a scene with working class astronauts that burst jokes over dinner to the thoughts and tight white t-shirts that make up González wardrobe. Riya is an ripley type, and although her head injury and subsequent amnesia prevent her from being as smart as Sigourney Weaver’s iconic sci-fi heroine, she shows an equally large amount of grains in a climate sequence involving a Flamethrower and the cosmic anemon just riya
That creature combines invertebrate goo with magnetic liquid metal, an example of the many visual structures that fly Lotus plays in “Ash.” The attention to details is impressive: an insectoid mobile surgery unit projects Vaporwave route on its patients, and even if the screen screen is in English – flashing text that says “sorry for your loss” when the device scans a dead body gives one of the film’s few laughs – the sound counseling is probably in Japanese. The attention is devoted to sound as well as in pictures, and Flying Lotus points is excellent, a main -noding mix of vibrant rhythms, abrasive noise and atmospheric synthesis.
The last twenty minutes of “Ash” are violent and intense, with some time to stop and appreciate the retro-futuristic set, gel lighting and bloody gore effects. This is where the mounting sequences become really aggressive and attack the viewer with pictures of barren alien landscapes and skulls with the meat that melts off their faces. (Again, psychonauts should continue with caution.) In combination with the first person’s action sequences that play as if they were filmed through a VR headset, it is all quite dizzy-a public member on my screening spent much of the film with my head between the knees.
No worries, but since the circular flashback structure ensures that we get to see most of the coolest images twice, first without context and again in some more coherent way later. The center of gravity is on “something.” Nuclear theme for space colonization and human survival instincts clearly translates. But keeping track of the characters can be difficult, given that we hardly spend at any time with them before the ability to attack and that many of them carry matching space suits in important scenes.
The type of movie guests leaning to ask their location mate what happens will be lost almost immediately. And trying to fight the film’s sensations, as unpleasant as they can sometimes be, will give nothing but misery. So just give up, vibe out and take comfort in the fact that “ash” is much more accessible than Flying Lotus’s first movie.
Rating: B-
“Ash” premiered at SXSW 2025. Rlje films release it in theaters on Friday 21 March.
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