Exploring the vast, uncharted reaches of outer space may be challenging enough when we have our wits completely about us, but imagine how much more difficult it would be if we tried to do so without any recollection of where we were or how we got there. So it is for Riya (Eiza González), an astronaut who wakes up on a mysterious, ash-covered planet to find herself being the only survivor of her crew. As she moves about her ship, she finds everyone else has been killed, and she has no memory of how they got that way. In fact, she doesn’t appear to readily recognize anyone, either, and her reaction is one more of curiosity and confusion than of shock and horror. She thus wanders aimlessly about the corpse-strewn spacecraft trying to get her bearings when someone suddenly appears outside the ship’s airlock. And, when the stranger comes on board, she lunges at him to protect herself, only to find that it’s her crewmate, Brion (Aaron Paul), who had apparently been off on a reconnaissance mission when the carnage went down and who now, besides Riya, is the only other survivor of the mission. But, like all of the deceased crew members, Riya doesn’t recognize Brion, either – that is, until bits and pieces of her memory start coming back to her. Still, even with those nuggets of recollection, she’s still unable to pull it all together in terms of who she is, why she’s there and the nature of the crew’s mission. To say more about that mission, though, would reveal too much, but, suffice it to say, that it’s not terribly difficult to figure out, especially for anyone who has seen the offerings in the “Alien” franchise (particularly “Prometheus” (2012) and its sequel, “Alien: Covenant” (2017)). And therein lies the problem with director Flying Lotus’s third feature, outing – its inherent predictability (to me, the cardinal sin of filmmaking), with its derivative and unoriginal narrative. To its credit, in an attempt to distinguish itself from these cinematic predecessors, the film seeks to make up for its innate deficiency by amping up the horror aspect with an array of graphic, visually inventive images (though, thankfully, the film manages to restrain itself just enough to keep it from becoming grotesque or gratuitous) along with a modest touch of camp (though this release could have used more of this if it really wanted to make a mark of its own). Nevertheless, despite the strength of these attributes and some mildly impressive special effects, “Ash” simply doesn’t have enough of what it takes to make it stand out on its own as groundbreaking sci-fi cinema. Ultimately, if you’re willing to settle for a halfway decent space-based horror flick reminiscent of material that you’ve likely seen already, you might want to give this one a look when it comes to streaming to kill time on a lazy weekend afternoon. However, if you’re like me and demand more out of movies in this genre, you can probably skip this one and feel comfortable that you probably haven’t missed much.
