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Isaiah Saxon’s A24-produced fantasy The Legend Of Ochi courts comparisons to an earlier, less computer-generated era of special and visual effects, stoking audiences’ apparently bottomless nostalgia for the ’80s glory days of animatronics, matte paintings, and Spielbergian influence. An opening bird’s-eye-view introduces us to the imaginary island of Carpathia, a mountainous mishmash of Central and Eastern Europe that sits somewhere “in the Black Sea”—a mossy, foggy, muddy Euro-nowhere where little funky-looking cars careen along bumpy roads, radios blare dated foreign pop, and mustachioed men in undershirts sit under bare bulbs, sternly eating soup. The geography is whimsical, and the signage is in a jumble of different languages or alphabets (or English, when it’s important to the story).
Carpathia has a problem with monsters: the Ochi of the title, who resemble apes with beady eyes, big ears, blue skin, and reddish fur. They live in the woods, eat livestock, and communicate in strange chirps. The task of culling these strange creatures has, for murky reasons, fallen on a group of children, mostly boys, under the command of Maxim (Willem Dafoe), a semi-deranged Ochi-tracker who struts around in fatigues and a costume-shop Roman helmet. Armed with old-fashioned muskets, homemade traps, and some kind of radar gizmo, Maxim and the boys venture into the forest at night to hunt the Ochi, though it appears that they are yet to bag one of the elusive beasts.
All of this is introduced mostly through the eyes of Maxim’s young daughter, Yuri (Helena Zengel), who has recently become old enough to join the nightly Ochi hunt. She lives with Maxim and her teenage adopted brother Petro (Finn Wolfhard) in a farmhouse where family is largely defined by the absence of mom, who left at some long-ago point in the past. (Maxim tells his young subordinates that she was “taken” from him by the fearsome Ochi, though it soon becomes clear that she ran away for her own, as-of-yet-unstated reasons.)
The subject at hand is, at least to an extent, maternal instinct. Yuri finds hers stirring precociously when she comes across an injured infant Ochi in the woods. She hides the creature (which is small enough to fit in a backpack), fashions a splint for its broken leg out of a pencil, and dons a set of plastic vampire teeth to imitate its mother. Given that she won’t be able to keep her new charge a secret for very long, she sets off to return to the cute little thing to its family, with Maxim and his child soldiers in pursuit.
The creature—realized through what appears to be a seamless combination of practical puppetry and digital effects—is one of The Legend Of Ochi’s obvious charms. It’s a little Baby Yoda, a little E.T., and more than a little Mogwai. The way the film’s grainy, tactile aesthetic blends settings and effects together speaks to the talents of Saxon, who first attracted attention in the late 2000s for his fantastical music videos (the best-known being Björk’s “Wanderlust”). There’s a bit of arthouse alongside the classic family movie influences; a more complete inventory of reference points would probably include storybook illustration, Wes Anderson movies (especially in the deadpan humor), and the animated works of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli. It is, to use a tired term, a vibe.
Yet for all of its imaginative inspirations, The Legend Of Ochi feels under-conceptualized: It’s a fairytale without much stirring under the studiously designed surface. As a writer, Saxon proves to be too earnest to subvert the formulaic adventure story and family dynamics; as a director, he never seems to get a handle on the kind of fuzzy, gooey sentimental feelings on which said formulaic adventure and family dynamics depend for resolution purposes. Nonetheless, there’s something to be said for a movie that aspires to a sense of wonder in an age of stultifying digital possibility—even if the only emotion it ends up inspiring is an appreciation for the fakery involved.
Director: Isaiah Saxon
Writer: Isaiah Saxon
Starring: Helena Zengel, Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson, Willem Dafoe
Release Date: April 25, 2025
