Flying Lotus has never been a filmmaker to colour inside the lines. With Kuso (2017), he exploded onto the scene with a hallucinogenic blend of body horror, surrealism, and sound design that dared viewers to stick with it—or run screaming. With Ash, he reins in the chaos just enough to create what is arguably his most accessible film to date, while still packing it with enough aural and visual flourishes to remain unmistakably his own.

Set on a remote planet and anchored by a creeping sense of cosmic dread, Ash follows a woman (Elza González) who wakes up to find her crew slaughtered and must unravel the mystery before a darker truth consumes her. It’s a premise steeped in sci-fi tradition, but Flying Lotus isn’t here to offer a straightforward space thriller. Instead, he weaves a waking dream of sound and vision—atmospheric, meditative, and disorienting in equal measure.

The real marvel is in the film’s sensory layering. The soundscape—unsurprisingly exquisite—is a collage of ambient dread, industrial echoes, and meditative melodies that feel like transmissions from another dimension. As a musician, Flying Lotus has always been a sound alchemist; here, he pushes that instinct into the very bones of the film.

Elza González gives a committed, emotional performance that grounds the film’s cerebral tendencies. It’s largely her show, and she rises to the occasion with a mix of vulnerability and resolve. Aaron Paul appears in a supporting role that brings both tension and quiet depth, acting as a counterpoint to González’s isolation and inner turmoil.

The film’s Achilles’ heel is its plot. Beneath the rich surface textures and hypnotic editing, Ash tells a story that is familiar, even predictable. But it’s cleverly concealed beneath the stylistic veneer, like a well-worn book with a mesmerising new cover. There’s craft in how Flying Lotus reshapes and recontextualises sci-fi horror tropes, but at times, it feels like style just barely holding up a sagging structure.

The Prognosis:

There’s no denying Ash is a step forward—a distillation of Flying Lotus’s eccentricities into something more narratively digestible while retaining his unique artistic stamp. For fans of bold sci-fi that dares to flirt with the abstract, Ash may not be the deepest story, but it’s one hell of a ride through an artist’s ever-evolving mind.

Ash is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

• Review by Saul Muerte