Movie · 2025 · Horror, Science Fiction, Thriller · 1h 35m · R · English
Curator score: 0.8/10 (62.1K ratings)
A new mindbender by Flying Lotus.
Overview
On the mysterious planet of Ash, Riya awakens to find her crew slaughtered. When a man named Brion arrives to rescue her, an ordeal of psychological and physical terror ensues while Riya and Brion must decide if they can trust one another to survive.
Ratings
Curator score: 0.8/10
IMDb: 4.6/10
Letterboxd: 2.35/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 71%
Metacritic: 63
TMDB: 5.2/10
Director
Flying Lotus
Production
XYZ Films, Echo Lake Entertainment, GFC Films, IPR.VC, Brainfeeder Films
Cast
Eiza González, Aaron Paul, Iko Uwais, Kate Elliott, Beulah Koale, Flying Lotus
Where to watch
Hulu, AMC+, Philo, Shudder
Curator Review
Verdict
A moody, visually ambitious sci-fi horror that clearly has ideas and atmosphere, but it seems to struggle with pacing, coherence, and payoff. If you’re here for trippy cosmic dread, practical-gore flashes, and a strong audiovisual vibe, it may land; if you want a tightly plotted thriller, it likely won’t.
Best for
fans of atmospheric space horror
viewers who prioritize visuals and sound design
people who enjoy slow-burn genre films with a late payoff
audiences open to surreal, messy storytelling
Skip if
you need a clear, tightly written plot
you dislike slow pacing or long stretches of setup
you want consistent tension over style
you are looking for a polished, crowd-pleasing horror experience
Overview
Ash is the kind of sci-fi horror that arrives with a strong mood and a shaky grip on its own machinery. The premise is classic isolation terror, but the film leans hard into disorientation, flash-fragmented dread, and a grimy, psychedelic texture that will either feel immersive or frustrating depending on your tolerance for ambiguity.
Worth noting
What seems to work best is the audiovisual attack: the score, the lighting, and the creature-effects energy all suggest a filmmaker chasing a very specific, very tactile strain of space horror. When it clicks, it has the nasty, pulpy charge of a midnight movie; when it doesn’t, the movie can feel like it’s stalling on atmosphere instead of building momentum.
Bottom line
For viewers who like their horror weird, corrosive, and a little bit unhinged, there’s enough here to justify a watch. For everyone else, the film’s uneven pacing and familiar genre beats may make the experience feel more like a promising experiment than a fully satisfying ride.
Top Letterboxd reviews
john (1★) · 1187 likes
More like “Ass.”
Kit Lazer (3★) · 763 likes
We have John Carpenter at home (complementary)
joe (3.5★) · 734 likes
gross cosmic space horror is back baby!!! atmospheric and trippy as fuck. worth watching in the theater alone for the psychedelic visuals & incredible score. shudder is really giving us the goods lately 🌀🪐
Kevflix And Chill (2.5★) · 561 likes
Ash is a frustratingly uneventful slow burn that finally wakes up in the final act—just in time to salvage some of the face-melty, ooey-gooey sci-fi horrors it spends the first hour and change only teasing through fleeting, non-sequitur flash jumpscares. Flying Lotus wears his influences loudly, but instead of synthesizing them into something fresh, the film mostly drifts through a haze of familiar beats without any urgency.
The script somehow manages to be both incoherent and entirely predictable, which is… more
Haunted Hippie (3.5★) · 488 likes
Mind fuck gross out horror on the silver screen??? In this economy?? We’re so back