The Ochi are a legendary forest species that communicates in sensations reasonably than phrases (and likewise by means of hocketing, a vocal approach that includes splitting a single melody throughout two completely different sounds). Against this, Isaiah Saxon’s “The Legend of Ochi” is a considerably inert however ingeniously crafted fantasy journey story that largely communicates in visuals.
Visuals like: A teenage woman traipsing throughout the Carpathian mountains with a small woodland creature — think about if Willem Dafoe and a snub-nosed golden monkey had been fused collectively in a vat of blue eyeshadow — driving in her backpack. Just like the precise Willem Dafoe clad in a go well with of World Battle I armor as he leads a squadron of peashooter-packing youngsters to chase the woman down. Like Emily Watson driving a pick-up truck with a wood hand and blasting Italian rock music as one of the stunning matte work this aspect of “The Black Narcissus” stretches out into the panorama round her. “The Legend of Ochi” might not have loads to say (particularly not in any type of spoken language), nevertheless it certain provides loads of issues to see.
Virtually actual sufficient to appear remembered, these hand-crafted pictures straddle the road between historical worlds and fashionable strategies with a allure that might be immediately acquainted to Saxon’s music video work along with his movie animation studio Encyclopedia Pictura; the country and ravishing piece they made for Björk’s 2007 banger “Wanderlust” nearly looks as if a proof-of-concept for the world the Ochi would finally inhabit (Watson’s efficiency is Björk-coded in a approach that seems like a realizing tribute). That world — a fictional island that seems like just a little pocket universe situated within the overlap between 1992 and “The NeverEnding Story” — may appear to be a reasonably regular place to develop up if not for the menace posed by the mysterious Ochi, who stay within the shadows and supposedly feast on the livestock at night time.
However the hazard extends to people as nicely. Yuri (Helena Zengel) has been raised to consider that the Ochi destroyed her household. Her lovingly militaristic father Maxim (Dafoe, in full Eggers mode) blames the beasts for taking away his spouse and depriving him the dream of a son — therefore the rabble of misplaced boys he assembles to hunt the Ochi each night time, a gaggle led by a twiggy orphan named Petro (Finn Wolfhard) who Maxim treats as his personal.
However Yuri is disenfranchised from her woman dad and his Ahab-like obsession with the creatures he blames for “taking her mom away from them,” and when she finds a wounded child Ochi within the forest one night time, it’s instantly clear that the big-eyed puppet understands her in a approach that no human ever has. (That the infant Ochi seems to be identical to Yuri’s father isn’t related to the plot, and it could not even be on goal, nevertheless it nonetheless provides a much-needed layer of Freudian dream logic to a movie whose story is commonly too easy for its personal good.) Just like the child Ochi, Yuri has been remoted from the one household she’s ever recognized. Maybe by taking the critter again to its lair on the coronary heart of the island, the woman will have the ability to reconcile the comforts of dwelling with the decision of the wild.
“The Legend of Ochi” too loosely coheres across the cognitive dissonance of feeling such as you don’t belong in your individual household, as Yuri and Maxim — a pair of pointedly inexpressive characters on the middle of a hyper-evocative world — stay a lot much less detailed than the atmosphere Saxon has created round them. And but, each lived-in and unnatural , the island of Carpathia itself so vividly conveys Yuri’s disaster that her want for belonging feels prefer it’s all the time on the tip of her tongue, even when phrases are by no means greater than a primitive instrument (the be aware she leaves for her dad earlier than working away reads: “I’m robust and funky and I don’t care what you suppose.”).
Saxon’s most constant power as an artist is his capability to create totally immersive areas on the intersection between emotional truth and environmental fantasy, and his debut function is such an uncanny mix of the actual and the unreal that its trailer fooled some trigger-happy dorks into assuming it will need to have been created with AI (a suspicion the film itself instantly dispels, as each one in all its pictures — each crinkle of an Ochi’s nostril, each inexperienced inch of respiratory moss underfoot — breathes with an excessive amount of vitality of its personal to really feel like a soulless imitation of life). That knee jerk response appears all of the extra ironic and embarrassing in hindsight, as “The Legend of Ochi” is nothing if not a narrative about — and an instance of — the bespoke energy of non-public expression in a world so desperate to subsume total languages, visible and in any other case, into the stuff of crude prompts.
It might not be something greater than that, both. For all the movie’s sensorial richness (which extends to the brilliance of its puppetry, the ethereal Carpathian luster of David Longstreth’s rating, and the semi-nostalgic splendor of the Cranium Island-like cave system the Ochi name dwelling, which feels as very similar to a throwback to ’80s fantasy because it does utterly misplaced in time), “The Legend of Ochi” struggles for a motive to be informed. Sensations abound, however a human viewers may wrestle to entry the identical emotionality the Ochi are supposedly in a position to mine from them.
The movie skips from one semi-charming affectation to the following (Dafoe telling his baby troopers to “bear in mind each phrase prefer it was the final drop of your mom’s milk,” Yuri’s affection for a black steel band referred to as Hell Throne, and so forth), however Saxon’s characters are inclined to put on these eccentricities like costumes. For a narrative that takes place in such a tactile and cohesive fantasy world, it’s irritating that the archness of its telling retains the viewer at a distance reasonably than pulling them nearer to the guts of the matter. Because of this, the stakes at play not often really feel worthy of the identical creativeness that makes them so clear, and the film goes slack in a approach it could by no means totally recuperate from when it slows down to clarify itself through the second act. Carpathia is a wierd and enchanted place that I’m thrilled to have visited, however I hope the following world Saxon creates permits us to really feel the land just a little extra deeply whereas we’re there, and offers us just a little extra to take again dwelling with us once we go away.
Grade: C+
“The Legend of Ochi” premiered on the 2025 Sundance Movie Competition. A24 will launch it in theaters on Friday, April 25.
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