On the mysterious planet of Ash, a woman awakens to find her crew slaughtered. When a man arrives to rescue her, they must decide if they can trust one another to survive. A film by Flying Lotus, starring Eiza González, Aaron Paul, Iko Uwais, Kate Elliott, Beulah Koale, and Flying Lotus.

After regaining consciousness, Riya (Eiza González) ventures out of her quarters into the darkened hallway to investigate. She discovers the brutally murdered bodies of her crewmates Kevin and Captain Adhi, though strangely, she doesn’t seem to recognize them. Frightened, she pulls the knife from Kevin’s body, thinking she might need it to protect herself.

A computerized voice repeatedly announces, ‘Reboot to activate standby power.’ Following this prompt, Riya heads to the control room and presses a button to restart the station system. As the system boots up, the outer door slides open, revealing a distant planet where white ash constantly falls from the sky. Believing the air is breathable, Riya steps outside and discovers another body in a body bag lying beside the door. Moments later, she begins gasping for breath, realizing the air might be poisonous. She quickly retreats back inside the station.

Suddenly, a fragment of memory flashes through Riya’s mind. It reveals that Riya is part of a crew sent on a perilous mission. The station team consisted of Captain Adhi (Iko Uwais), Kevin (Beulah Koale), Clarke (Kate Elliott), and Devis (Flying Lotus), while Brion remains on the Orbital to maintain communications between the station and home base.

Six vessels have already been dispatched across the galaxy searching for Earth-sized planets, all ending in failure. Riya’s team, Mission 7 or Vessel F, represents humanity’s last hope. They are tasked with landing on Planet K.O.I.442 or ‘Ash’ to determine if it could support human life.

As Riya struggles with fragmented memories, her past flashing sporadically through her mind as she tries to piece together her identity. Suddenly, Rita startles at the sharp clang of the airlock. A station alert blares: “Movement detected in Zone One.”

Riya ambushes the man, believing him to be an intruder coming to hurt her. But the intruder turns out to be Brion (Aaron Paul), whom Riya can’t recognize due to her memory loss. As she debates whether to trust him, Brion explains he received a distress call from her, prompting him to abandon his post on the Orbital to rescue her. In the message, he claims Riya warned that Clarke had suffered a psychotic break and turned against the crew.

Directed by American filmmaker and rapper Flying Lotus from a screenplay by Jonni Remmler, ASH is a visually impressive science fiction horror about an astronaut who wakes up on a distant planet with no memory of her identity or what happened.

Eiza González and Aaron Paul deliver compelling performances that sustain the film’s escalating tension. The production achieves memorable visual artistry, punctuated by disturbingly graphic depictions of bloody violence. Particularly noteworthy is the creature design, which combines nightmarish plausibility with a distinct aesthetic reminiscent of Resident Evil’s most iconic creations, resulting in genuinely unsettling horror.

However, I’m not sure whether the filmmaker intentionally hinted that Brion isn’t real, especially in the scene where Riya drags the dead crewmates outside the facility by herself while Paul only watches through the window.

While the narrative doesn’t break new ground and remains fairly predictable, the exceptional final act compensates for most of the film’s shortcomings.

ASH premiered at SXSW on 11 March 2025. The film was theatrically released in the United States on 21 March.