Ash Proves You Don’t Have to Break New Ground to Land Decent Horror

Ash

★ ★ ★

If you strip Ash down to its bare bones, you have a straightforward slasher film on a foreign planet. But this movie has some meat on it with fleshed-out characters, decent psychological horror and a well-written script. It’s also bloody and gory, sure to please horror aficionados as it earns every bit of its violent R-rating.

Riya (Eiza González) wakes up on the floor of her quarters on a research vessel that has set up camp on the surface of a planet. Their mission is to terraform the planet so humanity can live on.

Eiza González as Riya
© 2025 RLJE Films / Shudder

Riya looks like she’s been in a fight. She inspects the ship, and one by one, finds her dead crew members: Davis (Flying Lotus), Adhi (Iko Uwais) and Kevin (Beulah Koale). It’s apparent they’ve met a violent end. As she sees each one, she gets horrifying visions of what might have happened to them.

Clarke (Kate Elliott), another crew member, is missing. Riya assumes she’s left the research vessel and has left to explore the planet’s surface. Riya puts on her space suit and searches for her. When she doesn’t find her, she returns back to the vessel where Brion (Aaron Paul) is waiting. He’s taken a shuttle from their main ship in the planet’s orbit. He wants to see what’s going on and if the mission is in jeopardy.

Aaron Paul as Brion
© 2025 RLJE Films / Shudder

Riya and Brion try to piece together what happened on the vessel. Neither one knows if they can trust the other. This makes things harder for them when a greater threat presents itself.

Ash doesn’t break any new ground in the horror genre, but it does tell a tense, convincing story, and it manages to keep you guessing to the end.

Riya examining a plant
© 2025 RLJE Films / Shudder

Lotus is a film composer, actor and director. He’s directed a tightly wound film from a script by Jonni Remmler who makes his theatrical writing debut. From the directing, to the writing, Ash is a convincingly tense, psychologically bloody film. It’s well done, well written and the cinematography is top notch.

If you’re given the chance to go on a planetary terraforming mission, this movie may make you reconsider.