Ash

If you're into it, you're into it. Let's just say you're not: turn the picture off and let the soundtrack play.

In this age of expensive and overwrought world-building, it’s Ellison’s experiential care with well-worn material that delivers the goods.

A hypnotic star child of out-there wonder and internal corruption and chaos.

There are worse sci-fi/horror movies, but 'there are worse movies' is never the praise one likes to think it is. The word 'Competent!' rarely makes it into a movie’s marketing materials no matter how accurate it is.

The film’s seductive and trippy aesthetics help mask the overall dullness of this two-person chamber drama.

Light on answers but heavy on style.

Yet for all its overtures to “vibes” and putting “cool [stuff]” on screen, there’s very little visual or narrative flow to Ash. It has the outer shape of something fun, but all the parts inside are assembled incorrectly.

If not exactly original in the story department, this effective, dazzling-looking, single-location, minimal-cast sci-fi tale works due to its economy and its use of standalone visual imagery.

For all the bursts of nightmarish gore that invade Riya's mind, it's the moments in between this where the film starts to stall and undercut itself.

Flying Lotus leaves you with a final memorable shot, but we fear this promising film concerned with memory will prove to be forgettable.