Jen Raoult
The first scene in Ash, Flying Lotus’s new sci-fi thriller with a pulpy body horror heart, opens on a shellshocked Eiza González. She plays Riya, a deep-space explorer whose latest mission ended with the loss of her entire crew and no memory of what happened. Her only hints when she wakes up in the bedroom of an intergalactic vessel are the memories of her colleagues’ final moments, blood-soaked and with flesh melting from their bones. What follows is an interstellar mystery filled with as many questions as there are mutilated bodies.
Speaking from Austin, Texas where Ash premiered earlier this month, FlyLo seems relaxed even though he claims to be “really anxious” about the release of his new movie. He delivered the finished cut a year ago and it’s all been leading up to this week. He need not worry, though, Ash is propulsive viewing, calling to mind the Alien franchise, a clear influence the director namechecks in our interview, with its blend of high concept storytelling and gut-churning shocks.
Best known for his music, Ash is Flying Lotus’s second feature as director following 2019’s Kuso. Where that movie was a brash cult comedy experiment intent on pushing the boundaries of good taste (multiple scenes involve flying fecal matter and bodily fluids) Ash has a decidedly more mainstream approach. In addition to González, star of blockbusters including Hobbs & Shaw and the Netflix series 3 Body Problem, Ash also stars Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul as one a man sent to assist the investigation, and Indonesian actor Iko Uwais, whose impressive fight skills made him a star of The Raid movies. FlyLo fills his shots with blood-soaked images of scissors piercing major organs, flame-throwing combat, and creatures working their way into ears and out of faces.
In addition to directing (Ash was written by Jonni Remmler), FlyLo also provides the movie’s score. The music is minimal in design and was written while the movie was being edited in New Zealand, where it was also shot. The result, like what is shown on screen, is a mixture of wonder and terror that feels as spectral as it does anxiety-inducing. The score opens with ambient washes of sound that soon give way to ringing alarm bells and industrial synth stabs.
“I was just thinking about folks like John Carpenter because he had to do similar things when he was making his movies early on,” FlyLo says. “He was all by himself in a little hole with a little bit of time left, and he had to conjure up some stuff, and it obviously became really iconic. I tried to soak up his spirit and see what I could make.”
Read on for FlyLo’s experience of making Ash, his small role as part of the movie’s cast, and why there has never been a better time to be making music for the big screen
The FADER: Ash is a horror movie that begins at the end. Did you always plan to tell the story that way?
Flying Lotus: It's something that came in the edit, to be honest. I knew there was something there [while shooting] but I didn't know what it was going to be. It just started to make sense to go with that approach. It immediately starts to make you ask questions, like, what was that? I was looking for something that pulls you in. You wanna get a little bit of information, but you also don't want to get ahead of Riya. Discovery is a major part of what you see in the movie.
Eiza González is often the only actor in any given scene in Ash. What qualities does she possess that made her the right choice for this kind of role?
She had to be a badass but also with a really inquisitive nature. When we first started speaking she connected with it on a level that let me know, ‘Yeah. You get it.’ She hit me and was like, ‘This reminds me of Silent Hill 2’ and some other specific video games that I had already been thinking about that are very much the vibe I was going for.
Ash is very striking visually. Were there any other movies that you had as reference points for the way you wanted this movie to look?
There was an era post-Matrix, late ‘90s/early 2000s. It was right around the time of the music video boom where everything had very strong color grades and directors like Chris Cunningham and Spike Jonze were getting really creative. They were a big influence as well as Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s The City of Lost Children, Amélie, and Alien: Resurrection, too. Those are movies with strong visual identities in their color palettes.
Ash is more accessible and blockbuster-esque than your previous movie, Kuso. What was it about taking a mainstream approach that appealed to you?
I love all types of movies and I don't want to limit myself or limit the audience. Working on a movie is really hard and the worst thing that could happen is no one sees it. I think there is a way to make movies that appeal to wider audiences and also have individual ideas alongside traditional storytelling. I wanted to do something a bit more mainstream because I don't think people knew I had it in me. After I made Kuso it was hard to just get into the room [with producers] because people thought I was gonna be trying to make another movie like that.
So this was kind of a logical next step if I wanna continue making films, which I do. There’s a really bugged out sci-fi movie in my brain that I wanna create and a silly buddy comedy, too. Just totally different sides of the brain.
You also have a small on-screen part in the movie. How did you find the acting experience?
It was the last decision I made before it was too late because I really didn't wanna be in the movie. I was trying to avoid it for so long. I had reached out to Eric André to do the role but he couldn't make it work. So I started looking around in New Zealand and just had a lot of trouble finding Black actors in New Zealand. I had to have someone Black in the crew [of the space ship] so maybe I just do it? I ended up filming my scenes on the first day of shooting. It was a really interesting way to kick things off as an exercise in camaraderie. But it's also really weird. I don't recommend it unless you have got people around you that you can count on to tell you that you got a booger in your nose. People assume you know what you’re doing. I was like, ‘Wait, I need help, too.’
Were you always going to score this movie, as well as directing it?
Yes. I had a vision for the score from the very beginning. I knew exactly what I wanted it to sound like and I started working toward it. But as soon as I started cutting the footage together, I saw that my original vision was not working. I had to start from scratch. But I was due to go to New Zealand to finish postproduction on the movie. So I just packed my laptop and a MIDI controller and my hard drive. I was like, ‘Whatever I can make with this is gonna be the soundtrack.’ I didn’t have any keyboards or fancy gear from home or any of that stuff. If I have every option possible, then it's just gonna take ages because I'll just be experimenting. So it was just me, alone in a cubicle, doing this thing. Limitation helps me get stuff done.
The last decade in movies has seen a real trend of experimental musicians moving into film score work. I’m thinking of people like Mica Levi and Daniel Blumberg, who just won the Oscar for The Brutalist. As someone on the inside, can you explain this trend of directors looking to the underground?
Directors are fans of music. That's kinda how I got on. It was just a matter of the directors being super into my work over the years. When writers are writing they have always got some music on. So if you can have whoever you had on in the background doing your movie, then that's awesome.
Also, that traditional orchestral scoring stuff doesn't work on some of these smaller pictures. A lot of the indie films where they have less characters and a smaller space lend themselves to a smaller and intimate sound. When you have these experimental musicians, you can find a personal sounding thing that can be really effective. A lot of the music being made for these movies just wouldn't work on a Marvel scale.
Ash is in theaters now and will stream on Shudder later this year.
