People tend to overuse the term “mind-blowing” when hyping sci-fi movies, but in the case of Flying Lotus’ visually audacious “Ash,” the word feels apt. Weak on plot but pretty as a sunset (on the whole human race?), “Ash” opens with a shot of the cosmic turmoil swarming inside the brain of an astronaut far, far away from Earth, then pulls back abruptly, zooming out through her pupil to reveal the look of pure panic on the face of sole survivor Riya Ortiz (Eiza González). Cue a shock montage of all her crewmates, each with their head crushed in or blown open.

How’d they all die? Most unpleasantly. Fast-forward 90 minutes, and the final image is another head-spinner. Between those extremes, “Ash” is surprisingly conventional, especially coming from the maniac who conceived 2017 Sundance disrupter “Kuso” and the scatological game-show segment “Ozzy’s Dungeon” from “V/H/S/99”: a colorful, giallo-style homage...