The Legend of Ochi review – well-crafted but tame family adventure

It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least at the movies, that any child left unattended must be in want of a mythical creature to befriend. One can only imagine how that impulse would be inflamed living somewhere like Carpathia, an island of primeval forests and mist-laden mountains where rural Slavic communities caught out of time – some still riding horse-drawn carriages to mini-marts – dedicate equal time to farming the land and fearing it.

Thankfully for Yuri (Helena Zengel), the shy and sensitive protagonist of fantasy-adventure The Legend of Ochi, from first-time writer-director Isaiah Saxon, there’s magic in the wilderness – particularly in the form of the ochi, a reclusive simian species with reddish-orange fur, bluish facial features, and a unique language of high-pitched, melodic chirps and whistles.

Suffice it to say, the ochi are adorable, and the mystical world they inhabit has been realized in painstakingly tactile fashion by Saxon, who labored for years over the profusion of handmade effects – puppets and animatronics for the ochi, matte paintings for the landscape – that give his film a grounded quality. It’s rare to see such visually led fantasy storytelling achieved practically (so rare the film’s trailer triggered debate over whether the production had used generative AI, prompting Saxon to personally refute such assumptions). The film’s at its most breathtaking when simply luxuriating in the lush, dreamy ambience of its remote landscape, where alpine lakes abound and there’s always a light haze of rain to the mountain air.

Yuri’s militant father Maxim (Willem Dafoe), hunts ochi at night, believing if he doesn’t his livestock will be preyed upon. Yuri’s skeptical, not least because Maxim’s excessively fond of his gold armor. She knows – despite Maxim claiming the ochi “took his wife” – that her mother (Emily Watson) left of her own accord, and this tension between father and daughter has become another seldom-vocalized schism in their oppressive household. After she encounters a baby ochi, injured and alone, Yuri discovers this scared little critter – with oversized ears and puppy-dog eyes the size of saucers – is nothing to fear, and the girl rebels against her father by resolving to return the ochi to its family.

From there, The Legend of Ochi maps familiar terrain; its themes of kinship and coexistence aren’t revelations but moral values the story’s fable-like structure gently yet firmly instills. As such, there’s little mystery in the third act and – given the lavish melodies and orchestrations of David Longstreth’s 80-minute score – no ambiguity in its play for our heartstrings. The film is a triumph of special effects, certainly, but its narrative ambitions are more modest and predictable.

Produced by A24, Saxon’s film harkens back to Amblin classics like E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial and Gremlins, where coming-of-age fantasy collided with family drama, the emotive frisson between them fueled by a sense of danger and possibility and embodied by peculiar visitors from another place. The former’s defining image, a boy and his alien friend riding a bicycle into the midnight sky, enchanted an entire generation; certain sights and sounds here similarly fire the imagination, even if they’re shrouded in a story that more often functions in thrall to its influences than as anything near an original artifact.