The spirits of Jim Henson and Steven Spielberg are thriving in The Legend of Ochi, a children’s fantasy that also adds a little Star Wars to its out-of-this-world mix.
A fable about civilization and nature, man and beast, and mothers and daughters, writer/director Isaiah Saxon’s feature, in theaters April 18, feels like Amblin via A24 (its distributor). And if the spell it casts is somewhat familiar, it’s nonetheless enlivened by surefooted atmosphere, excellent puppetry, and charismatically outsized performances from Emily Watson and Willem Dafoe—the latter of whom continues to be cinema’s go-to guy for colorfully crazy larger-than-life turns.
On the island of Carpathia, locals spend their days farming and tending to their four-legged flocks, always aware of the malevolent threat looming just overhead in the mountains that surround their quiet hamlet.
In the lush, verdant wilderness reside Ochi, ape-like creatures with reddish-orange fur and blue faces that communicate with each other by high-pitched cooing. So feared are these indigenous inhabitants (who only emerge once the sun has set) that the town has set a strict curfew and placed Ochi scarecrows around their expansive Tolkien-esque fields. As The Legend of Ochi’s introduction elucidates, their concerns aren’t completely unfounded, given that livestock are regular casualties of the Ochi’s hunger.
In a bright yellow puffy coat and tall worn winter boots, Yuri (Helena Zengel) sneaks off to the library to read about her home’s mythological fiends. Such research confirms the scary stories she hears ad nauseam from her father Maxim (Dafoe), who additionally cares for adopted teen Petro (Finn Wolfhard) and who leads a group of young boy soldiers on Ochi hunts in the dead of night. On her first outing with this crew, Yuri comes face to face with a gigantic mamma Ochi whom Petro shoots, thereby separating it from its young child, who escapes across the treetops in a panorama that—silhouetting the springy tyke against the moonlit sky—recalls E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
That’s not the film’s sole similarity to Spielberg’s classic, as Yuri—following a dinner-table fight with her dad, who does his Ochi hunting in ornate, ramshackle gold armor—heads into the misty forest to check on their Ochi traps. What she discovers is the lost baby Ochi, whose leg has been injured and who’s taken refuge in a mossy hole.
Despite angry and frightened hissing, the tyke agrees to go with Yuri to her bedroom, where she bandages its wound and bonds with it over her pet caterpillars, who consciously respond to the baby’s warbling call. By this point, audiences will likewise warm to the pint-sized animal, and not simply because his large dark eyes, pointy protruding ears, and strange non-verbal communications make him resemble a slightly hairier version of The Mandelorian’s Grogu, aka “Baby Yoda.”
The Ochi’s verbal exclamations attract the attention of Petro, who arrives at Yuri’s door with his rifle drawn. Still, he allows her to escape with the youngling through her window into the woods. Thus begins the girl’s quest to return the infant to its clan—a mission that soon comes to involve her own maternal reunion.
Though Maxim claims that the Ochi took his beloved wife from him, he merely means that figuratively; his ex Dasha (Watson) resides in the mountains in her own cabin, whose rickety roof and cluttered interior makes it a decidedly fairy tale abode. Dasha has one wooden hand and knows more about the Ochi than her relatives, and she demonstrates her expertise when Yuri appears with an Ochi bite that’s seemingly gifted her the ability to converse with her pal and yet has badly infected her arm—requiring a unique recipe made from a wild bloodsucking bat.
Scored to ethereal flute punctuated by deep cello strings, The Legend of Ochi is an adventure about (re)connection, with Yuri and her new pal bridging the human-Ochi divide (and coping with their kindred loneliness and need) through compassion and consideration.
Director Saxon’s animatronic puppets boast the right measure of hyperrealism, so that their lifelike movements are ever-so-slightly unreal. The baby Ochi is a particularly winning creation, and at least as charismatic as Zengel, whose performance is suitably wide-eyed if a tad too opaque. Not so for Dafoe and Watson, who seethe with fury, resentment and hurt as former spouses forced to confront their own strained relationship at the same time that they endeavor to protect their daughter from harm.
Whether singing along to a foreign ditty in his truck, fuming upon discovering Ochi hair in Yuri’s bedroom (to the blaring sound of death metal), or lecturing his adolescent charges about the need to exterminate the Ochi “devils,” Dafoe is his typically delightful gonzo self, and he’s nicely contrasted with Watson’s stern and reclusive Dasha.
Both, however, are just supporting players in The Legend of Ochi, and the film’s bizarro energy flags somewhat whenever they’re off-screen. A lack of electricity also typifies the proceedings’ final third, with Yuri’s efforts to reach the Ochi’s cave home—a destination discovered thanks to Dasha’s secret maps—proving light on interesting incidents and legitimate suspense. Occasionally, it feels as if the material is skipping ahead without filling in all its blanks, most notably during a rushed sequence in which Yuri, with next to no effort, builds a raft suitable for river travel.
The Legend of Ochi is destined to end on a sweet note and more or less nails it, thereby easily overcoming a few of its bumpier preceding moments and skimpy peripheral characterizations (most notably with regards to Wolfhard’s Petro, who’s an underdeveloped enigma throughout).
Gently celebrating the need for communion—whether with the natural world or estranged mothers and fathers—it’s an impressive debut for Saxon, whose non-CGI effects are wondrous and whose gift for mood and pace (amplified by expansive aerial shots of this landscape) is consistently evocative.
Weird, menacing, and enchanting, the film suggests the enduring vitality of the old ways, both narratively and formally, even as it develops its own novel mythology, monster, and moving drama. It may not fully achieve the heights of the predecessors to which it’s indebted, but it’s an auspicious calling card for its talented director.
