Macabre…ish Horror Review: Ash & Dust

Ash & Dust, 2022/ 85 min

I this movie simply because a bunch of weirdos were complaining that it was boring and the only ‘action’ it showed was a man being beaten up. And there were tons of comments like that. So naturally, I found it and watched it and once again, I have to say, people do not know how to watch movies. This movie was atmospherically moody, five minutes in, by feel alone, you know what’s coming. The composition was so nicely done. The music was great and helped set the tone of overall malaise and melancholy.

First of all, the first really physically violent scene was of a man being tortured. The man was getting the hell beaten out of him. It was agonizing to watch and hear, him begging for his life and it finally ended with his execution. By the way, the guy being tortured, his performance was outstanding! This scene told me, that there would be a lot more torture of other people and it would likely be worse. So bad, you don’t want to see it.

So when the next torture scene came around, they didn’t actually show it. What they did show in the frame was the outside of a house, front door opened, man standing outside…waiting. But we sure heard it, it was a woman screaming and it was awful. The next time we ‘see’ this particular torture scene, the frame changes to inside the room she’s in but the camera isn’t on her, it’s on the person watching. But he’s doing more than just watching, he’s monitoring. Like how a manager observes an employee. And all you hear, is her screaming and terrible exhausted crying.

And the final time we see that particular scene, we see another man enter the room and fall to his knees, he is crushed and inconsolable. All of the other people are gone and the room is silent. The camera is pointing at him, not the woman. He eventually goes over to the bed and there’s a shape of a person wrapped in a blanket. So not only do we never see her torture, we never see her and it had the same impact without it being torture porn.

And this is largely the pattern in the rest of the movie, which ends up being largely psychological horror. Another ‘victim’ is ‘forced’ to kill the intended target. People are beaten and finally killed but we don’t witness the torture, the torture is for them (not us, the observers) we mostly only witness the message.