Come get your mind blown out the back of your skull in Flying Lotus’ newest feature, Ash! Recently celebrating its World Premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival, Ash is an interstellar mind trip halfway across the universe where the air is toxic, the environment is hostile, and your own mind is the most untrustworthy place. Starring Eiza Gonzalez (Baby Driver) and Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad), with a supporting appearance from Indonesian ass kicker Iko Uwais (The Raid), this sci-fi brain scrambler continues Flying Lotus’ streak of brash, in-your-face cinema that you can’t see anywhere else.
Set in the far reaches of outer space, on a planet that Earth scientists hoped could be a suitable replacement for the planet we long ago destroyed, Riya (Eiza Gonzalez) awakens on her ship in the aftermath of an attack. She has a massive head injury, her ship is in shambles, and her entire crew (including Flying Lotus himself) has been brutally murdered. Only flashes of what happened are accessible in her memory, but she learns very quickly that she is all alone….until Brion (Aaron Paul) comes knocking on the outer door. Together, Riya and Brion fight for survival on this inhospitable land, and search for answers to what killed their entire crew.
In a very short time, Flying Lotus has made a name for himself as a filmmaker within the Midnight crowd. Mostly as a go-to for gross-out cinema. I know people that love twisted stuff but still haven’t finished his debut feature Kuso! Not to mention that segment of his in V/H/S/99 that showed a deranged family put a game show host through a gnarly torture maze. Ash, on the other hand, is a much easier pill to swallow. So long as you like seeing melted faces, hallucinatory visuals, and a bombardment of hellscape visuals (a la Event Horizon) where people scream in agony while getting ripped apart. Just some light, carefree sci-fi horror watchin’ for all the intergalactic lovers out there.
The core of Ash is a pretty bare bones story with more trippy visuals than surprising revelations. Aaron Paul huffs and puffs across the whole movie (and ultra serious default mode for him tbh) but Eiza Gonzalez balances the scales as a badass problem solver (not entirely unlike Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley). Fans of psychedelic sci-fi and mind-altering gore with especially dig Ash‘s otherworldly horrors. It’s a little light in the story department but in a world where we’re selling vibes at wholesale prices, Ash at least strives to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Its biggest surprises come through in its shock-and-awe visuals. Rather than pulling the rug out from underneath you, Ash invites you to lay down, get comfy and enjoy all the pretty (blood-splattered) colours.
“An interstellar mind trip […a] sci-fi brain scrambler “
Ash, directed by Flying Lotus, celebrated its World Premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival and will be crash landing into theatres March 21. Click HERE to follow our continued coverage of the festival, an let us know if you think alien’s are real over in the Nightmare on Film Street Discord!
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