Flying Lotus's ASH and KUSO -- Who Am I?

By Camden Ferrell

​Flying Lotus debuted as a filmmaker with his film Kuso, an utterly disgusting and provocative anthology film that inspired walkouts at its premiere in 2017. For better or worse, it marked the cataclysmic arrival of a bold and visionary creator. Several years later, he is releasing his next feature Ash (although he did direct a segment from V/H/S/99). While both of his features feel completely different, there seems to be a few threads that bind the bodies of work from their visual style, shock value, and often subtle subtext.
 
Both films tackle humanity in the context of change. Whether that’s interstellar pioneers on the precipice of a new era of humankind, or if it’s disconnected stories following a mutated world in the wake of a catastrophic earthquake. In Ash, we follow Riya, an astronaut who wakes up bloodied to the horrors of her dead colleagues with no memories of what happened. In a moment of fear and confusion, Riya asks herself, “Who Am I?”
 
I think this question serves as the foundation for Flying Lotus’s main fascination in his newest movie. He seems particularly fascinated with the concept of memory, and how we are able to define ourselves through our memory. If we forget who we are, then what do we have left? How can we understand who we are, if we can’t even remember? This is a thematic thread that is rarely front and center in Ash, but it’s one that feels ever-present in this survival thriller. Even if the story itself can feel derivative and sometimes meandering in its execution, Flying Lotus never makes it feel boring, and this looming exploration of the self contributes to that.

​This doesn't seem to be a new concept for the filmmaker. Underneath all of the fecal matter and bodily fluids in Kuso, it seems he spent some of the segments exploring cultural identity in a unique and idiosyncratic way. I find myself thinking of the segment Smear which follows Charlie, a boy who is force-fed nauseating food by his mother, leading him to embarrassment and discomfort. I viewed that as a rejection of culture and values from those who came before, and I found this story to contain similar questions about who we are in this world. In a strange world after disaster, Charlie grapples with this desire to figure out who he is amidst the fear of continual inundation of quite literal toxic material. Within this segment, Flying Lotus seems to also plant some ideas regarding racial politics in our tumultuous world as we see an unnamed and uninvolved Black student getting punished when Charlie defecates himself. Understanding who you are is already complicated as is, but it’s exacerbated when you’re in a world that is cruel and confusing.
 
One of the more surface-level ties between both films is its ability to shock viewers with disturbing imagery. While his first film uses this imagery in excess (seemingly without reason quite often), Ash feels more intentional in its use of shock value. It contributes to the more sinister narrative of this story, and it serves as a reminder of the horrors that humans are capable of as well as the horrors of the unknown.
 
Even if one does not enjoy the films of Flying Lotus, it’s hard to deny he has a singular voice and talent for creating unique and unnerving atmospheres. In Kuso, he creates an unsettling and almost dystopian wasteland. It’s literal waste, moral waste, or both. In Ash, he unsettles viewers not with dystopia but with more conventional mortal horrors and more indescribable existential dread. It’s more straightforward than his debut feature, but it’s one that feels more mature in practice, and it doesn’t sacrifice the cinematic staples that gave him a unique voice back in 2017.
 
Ash is in theaters on March 21.