The Legend of Ochi Remixes The Best Of the Children’s Fantasy Epic
A girl and her ochi.
When The Legend of Ochi’s trailer first dropped online, it kicked up a wave of controversy over its distinctly glossy and slightly uncanny-looking creatures. They must be AI, internet users cried. How dare AI corrupt the sanctity of our beloved A24 movies, other users bemoaned. The outcry got so bad that director Isaiah Saxon, a first-time feature filmmaker for whom Legend of Ochi was a longtime passion project, had to step in to clarify that there was absolutely no AI used in the film. “Six years of handmade work: puppets, animatronics, matte paintings, and a bit of 3D animation,” Saxon wrote in a since-deleted post on X (formerly known as Twitter). “No AI. There’s the statement.”
What these internet naysayers might have been trying to articulate — if we’re being generous — is that Legend of Ochi looks very familiar. And on that observation, they’d have a point: Legend of Ochi is part of the grand tradition of the “child and their creature” fantasy adventure story — a genre perfected by Steven Spielberg’s ET and its many, many knockoffs. Like many Amblin-inspired movies, Legend of Ochi sometimes feels a little too calculated and formulaic, a byproduct of being part of a genre that has honed its formula to a fine point. But there’s something sweet and wholesome about Legend of Ochi’s guilelessly earnest approach to a story that’s been told a million times before, not to mention the stunning, meticulously crafted visuals that Saxon has worked so hard on. It all works to immerse you into the beautiful, otherworldly world of Legend of Ochi.
The Legend of Ochi follows a young girl named Yuri (Helena Zengel, with a fierceness that matches her breakout performance in System Crasher) who lives in a remote, vaguely Nordic village that has long battled mythical creatures. Her father Maxim (Willem Dafoe) zealously hunts the creatures known as the ochi, red-eyed forest dwellers who prey on the village’s farm animals, with the help of a platoon of children. The night that Yuri accompanies him on one of his team’s hunts, she ends up stumbling on a baby ochi caught in a trap. Taking pity on him, she brings the child home and nurses him back to health, naturally without the knowledge of her father. After her already-strained relationship with her father snaps, Yuri runs away from home, embarking on an epic quest to take the baby ochi home to his mother, evading misguided childhood friends (Finn Wolfhard) and strange hermit women (Emily Watson) as she journeys to the ochi’s long-hidden haven.
As you might’ve gleaned from its synopsis, Legend of Ochi follows many of the tried-and-true plot beats of an Amblin-esque adventure, where an outcast child befriends a misunderstood creature and they go on a journey, pursued by militant forces hellbent on destroying or capturing said creature. But Legend of Ochi is not just a fantasy-coded ET redux; its enchanting mythical forest also takes a page from Hayao Miyazaki’s films, while its third act climax is pulled straight from the third How to Train Your Dragon movie. But to call Legend of Ochi a knockoff feels too cruel. It’s a pastiche, yes, but a sweet and delightful one. And it’s one that inarguably looks gorgeous.
Yuri and the baby ochi attempt to communicate.
The same deeply saturated colors and shallow depth of field that had the internet accusing Saxon of using AI is also Legend of Ochi’s greatest asset, lending the film an eerie, otherworldly quality. It’s aided by the mix of modern and archaic technology that the villagers of this strange remote village use — dingy trucks drive alongside horse-drawn carts, while Dafoe’s Maxim dons an ill-fitting suit of Viking armor to fight the ochi, while blasting pop music in his pick-up truck. Legend of Ochi feels caught between the past and the present, and it’s never more apparent than in the design and movement of the mythical ochi. At first glance, they look a little too smooth — earning them that AI “vibe” — but their every stuttering movement makes it clear that they’re the product of incredible puppeteering. The ochi, with its adorably large eyes and elongated ears is like a Gremlin put through a Studio Ghibli filter, with the stilted quirks of a Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animation. The effect is nearly indescribable — thrusting you into an uncanny valley before you can peel back the layers of artistry. They truly look unique and, importantly, are manufactured for maximum cuteness.
Legend of Ochi isn’t totally successful at making an old formula feel new. It’s all a little too familiar, and its plot twists are all a little too predictable. But the striking cinematography from Evan Prosofsky, and Saxon’s earnest passion for this strange, otherworldly world is enough to immerse you a little bit. Sure, Legend of Ochi may not be saying anything new, but it says it beautifully.
