Horror Movie Review: Ash (2025)

An enticing watch, Ash promises so much with its combination of sci-fi thrills, body horror, and non-linear storytelling, but ends up being a muddled mess that drags on and on to the point of being irritating.

There’s some great ideas here, even better visuals, top acting, and some really startling moments of horror, but all I’ll about Ash in the end is how maddening it is.

Directed by Flying Lotus and written by Jonni Remmler, it stars Eiza González, Aaron Paul, Iko Uwais, Kate Elliott, Beulah Koale, and Lotus. Ash tells its story in a very indirect way, jumping between times and using flashbacks to fill in other gaps. This means explaining its story is not easy, so I am going to set out the rough premise only, as a lot of what I could tell you isn’t revealed until later in the film. Sometimes not properly either, forcing you to fill in the blanks, and almost always creating more questions than answers.

The film is set on some unknown planet where a group of astronauts were sent to investigate potential future habitats. There’s also something at the end of the film suggesting they might have also been hoping to find alien tech that would allow them to terraform planets too. This part is confusing I’m afraid, but regardless, this is where we are and we meet Riya, who wakes up on the floor of her room, having suffered a heavy blow to the head. The station appears to be in lockdown, and she can’t what happened.

Though the disarray and dead body of her colleague certainly suggest something bad happened.

Staggering from room to room, she finds more and more signs of horror, but no-one alive it seems. Whatever happened here, it wasn’t pretty, and she appears to be all alone now. That is until another member of the crew, Brion, arrives having been in orbit and having become concerned when he was getting no answer from the planet.

Seeing the chaos, his goal is simple, get off the planet now. Riya’s goal is a bit different, she needs to find out what happened here, even if it’s the kind of thing you wouldn’t want to .

With twists a-plenty, flashbacks that fill in blanks that every viewer will have already filled in, and plot points constantly being added, Ash should at least be an exciting watch, but incredibly, it’s really slow and monotonous. Not only does the story drag its heels, but characters move and act laboriously as well. This is a horror film trope, but here it just comes across as stalling, especially as the two main characters repeat themselves over and over again. Eiza González and Aaron Paul are class actors, and do the best they can here, but when they’re just saying and doing the same things over and over again, it’s really hard to see them in a positive light. Especially as, when the first of many twists arrive, it should change the dynamic but doesn’t. Instead, it’s the same conversations with just a bit more urgency.

There’s a much simpler story here, one that would have made the film significantly more interesting and potentially more frightening, but that’s not the film we get. Instead, we get an experience that becomes messier and less interesting as it goes on. Even its stylish look and sound, which really are elements worth praising, starts to feel more ordinary the longer you experience it. Especially as there are plenty of moments where it’s clearly more about style than substance.

I didn’t like the film in the end, but I think I could be in the minority there as Ash has plenty about it to like. It’s just when it’s all put together, it doesn’t work. I shouldn’t be annoyed while watching a film, and Ash annoyed the hell out of me.