Ash

Steven Ellison is better known as Flying Lotus, the Los Angeles electronic producer. After his horror comedy debut 'Kuso', his second feature heads into space with a script by Jonni Remmler. 'Ash' is science fiction horror set in a research station on a faraway planet, and he wrote the score too, with John Carpenter as the model he openly admits to.

Riya comes to in a science base with a head wound and no idea who she is or how she got there. She wanders the corridors under flickering fluorescents and red lights and finds her crew dead. She doesn't know what happened, but flashes of the massacre keep cutting through her head.

Then Brion turns up. He says he's one of the team: he was on the ship in orbit and came down when he picked up her distress call. He wants to help her remember and get her off the planet as fast as he can. But something about him doesn't add up, and Riya has to decide whether she can trust the only other person alive.

The film was first announced with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tessa Thompson. In 2023 they were replaced by Aaron Paul, Jesse in 'Breaking Bad', and Eiza González, friends for years. Iko Uwais from 'The Raid', Kate Elliott and Beulah Koale fill out the crew, along with the director himself, who took a part when he couldn't find anyone else. It was shot in 2023 in a warehouse in New Zealand, with Neill Blomkamp among the executive producers.

It premiered at SXSW in March 2025 and opened in American cinemas on the 21st, taking $689,144 from 1,136 cinemas, well short of its forecast. Amazon had bought the international rights, so British viewers got it on Prime Video at the end of April. Critics praised the atmosphere, the images and the music, but plenty found the mystery more predictable than its premise promised.

• Action
• Science fiction
• Horror