film review: ASHES (2019)

Director: Barry Jay
Writer: Barry Jay
Starring: Elizabeth Keener, Jeremy Earl, Yumarie Morales and Angelique Maurnae

​In order to give what we believe to be a more unbiased constructive criticism of the piece, the members of Bloodhound Pix are tackling each review as a panel of three. None of the members know the others’ thoughts on the content until after they submit their initial response.

Review by Bloodhound Pix 

Bloodhound Pix is made up of: Craig Draheim, Josh Lee, and Kyle Hintz
 
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After a family's estranged aunt passes away, they're reluctant and creeped out to receive her cremated ashes. But when a series of supernatural misfortunes beset them, they'll have to go through Hell to be rid of her angry spirit.
 
Initial Reaction
 
C. First I have to give credit to the cast. They were dynamic and felt like a tight-knit group with “real” people and not because the script says so. Melinda DeKay, who played Aunt Marion fits the bill as an evil spirit and there were many creepy moments. A lot of this is due to the format that most likely relies heavily on improvisation for the interview scenes. The best comparison I can come up with is the horror version of Modern Family, as most of the movie is in a narrative format but it will jump to the family members being interviewed on their couch. There was even some comedic moments that I felt helped liven the movie up. However, Modern Family works with viewers because it is 24ish minutes and has plenty of elements to move the pacing along: large cast, multiple storylines, commercials, slapstick action-driven elements, and so on. Sadly by 24ish minutes of Ashes it felt like I’d been sitting there for 90 minutes already. It doesn’t help that most of the major goals, such as the aunt’s ashes and the family realizing the ashes are what is causing their misfortune, then deciding to get rid of them is all made clear in the first 10. While attempting to make this a dread-soaked slow burn, by throwing all this information at us so quickly we are kind of left thinking, “okay… what now?”
 
This is where every card is pulled out to keep things going to that “appropriate” feature length, with countless scenes of them sitting around basically repeating themselves with:
“We need to get rid of the ashes. I had a dream that says we should.”
“No, it’s disgraceful!”
“Fine, then let’s come to a happy medium.”
And repeat.
One almost feels that if it would have been something like a webseries, its format would be more effective and the constant flashing to interviews wouldn’t cause the movie to drag so much.
 
Big fans of possession movies will find the format enough to (hopefully) stand out from all the Possession of (insert female name here) movies, while still keeping the major tropes. The chemistry among the cast is solid and if anything comes from this it’s that these actors should get more roles. In the end the attempt at making a tension-building slow burn, with the occasional jumpscare backfired, leaving a lot of viewers finding a way to get on their phones.
 
J. I thought the film had some well crafted chills that utilized a pretty great sound design and imagery and that’s a good thing because I felt a lot of the plot points were somewhat paint-by-the-numbers.  For a haunting film you had possession hokum.  Ouija hokum.  Paranormal expert hokum.  Seance hokum.  Character death hokum that wasn’t too surprising, especially in the order that the characters were killed off.  I thought the actress that played the ill fated Aunt Marion, Melinda DeKay was creepy as all hell and what made her beef with her family all the more interesting was that she wasn’t really in the wrong.  They were assholes to her while she was alive and now that she’s not, you better believe she’s gonna haunt their asses from beyond the grave.  There was sparse humor that I thought mostly worked in spades which was welcoming.  One thing that did bother me was the creative choice to have “character confessionals” where they individually speak directly to the camera/audience.  I think these sequences could be omitted and you wouldn’t lose anything other than some exposition that really wasn’t necessary to understand anything.  It would also knock off some runtime minutes.  Also, the inclusion of characters at various points watching Night of the Living Dead (twice!), Frankenstein and Nosferatu was a bit of overkill too.   Even more so when the events in said films were almost mirroring events happening in Ashes.  We get it, these films are classics but once would’ve been enough.  Again, the sound design was great and the moments of Aunt Marion’s unleashing fury on her poor hapless family worked well.  Nothing reinvented the wheel but effective chills and an entertaining ride to the finish is plenty to make this a good watch.  Moral of the story: don't be an asshole to your family members or suffer the usual hokum involved with the inevitable haunts!
 
K.  Alright, so the actors all do a solid job in this one, even if they’re given so-so material to work with.  Technically, it’s pretty sound.  But the story falters left and right, and the tone is all over the place.  The film relies heavily on mockumentary-style confessional interviews and it’s never explained why the family has a camera crew in their living room or why the style shifts without any narrative motivation.  These confessionals seem like a good way to add humor and dispense exposition at first but they become cloying and redundant. 
 
There’s a big problem with this film: the screenplay.  The central dramatic issue is what the family should do with Aunt Marion’s ashes.  The problem is a non-problem.  You can bury them or dump them in the ocean, or throw them away.  It’s easily solved.  Okay, now if it took a long time for the family to determine that the spooky happenings are caused by the ashes, then maybe you’d have something.  But it’s made clear 10 minutes in that the ashes creep everyone out and are likely going to cause problems, which they do.  Then there’s still senseless and poorly written debate about what to do with them, as if anyone would give a shit how they’re disposed of when their lives are in danger.  This is where the suspension of disbelief is broken by false actions from the characters.  Their concern for dealing with the ashes in a decorous manner outweighs their impulse for self-preservation.  Sorry, but I call bullshit.
 
There are also several attempts at shifting tone from comedy to horror to action that don’t really work.  And a paranormal duo, one of which is basically Daredevil.  There’s also a series of unnecessary time and date title cards that serve no purpose.  But the big issue is the lack of narrative drive and characters that are subject to the nonsensical plot rather than having motivations of their own.  This is another cause of technical proficiency paired with absolutely zero storytelling skill.  Cool shots, I’m bored, bro.
 
 
Response
 
C. Without repeating myself or others (which I will be) I think this is another prime example of a newer filmmaker going “I want to make a feature but don’t have a lot of money. What’s a good idea that can work on a low budget? A horror movie? A possession/haunted house movie?  If it’s a mockumentary I won’t have to worry about a script as much (This is not true). Wonderful!”
 
What we’re left with is a movie with story devices that grow stale within the first 20 minutes and a plot that was not planned out well in the scripting phase to give us enough substance to last a feature length. If this was a 30 minute short you would have me and I believe all three of us fully on board. However, we live in a time where it has to be a feature and not only that but a FRANCHISE or CINEMATIC UNIVERSE or SERIES! But as the three of us got to hear Peter Farrelly state a couple years ago, “longer or continuing stories are better just like a novel is better than a short story”... Yeah? I’ll be honest, I’ve read a lot of mediocre novels but I’ve also read short stories that have impacted me for decades. Sometimes a story isn’t meant to be a feature, just as some stories don’t work well as movies. Maybe they’re better suited as a graphic novel or radio drama or painting or hell, maybe even as a fictional SnapChat story, who knows?
 
At the end of the day there’s some great thrills and some funny moments but those parts got lost in the sea of problematic elements.
 
J. Yeah this is a somewhat paint-by-the-numbers haunting film.  With story issues.  Looking back I keep thinking about how many times the family sat around a table (because of course they did), having a conversation about what they should do with Aunt Marion’s ashes.  Jesus Christ! Get rid of the motherfuckers!  Garbage disposal!  Turn on the water full blast and dump them down the disposal.  Problem solved and movie over.  Thirty minutes into it.  I’ll reiterate that I did think some of the scare scenes were effective and the director, Barry Jay, clearly knows what he’s doing as far as shooting that stuff. 
 
K.  I have to agree with my comrades here.  There are some redeeming elements, some humor, and some decent spooky elements, but overall the lack of story dragged all those things down and caused me to lose interest pretty early on.
 
Next time they should team up with a screenwriter so they have something worthwhile to film.