The Legend of Ochi (2025)

3 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Creature Comforts

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Before heading to a screening of Isaiah Saxon's feature debut The Legend of Ochi, I was telling a friend about it, that it was about a girl and a small, cute creature, and I flatly assumed that the creature was going to be CGI. To my surprise and enchantment, the creature was a practical puppet, right there on set with the actors to look at and touch. I had a rush of memories of stuff (The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Willow, etc.) that could spin movie magic before computer-generated blobs took over. I'm not sure if this will be a selling point for others, but this movie is tactile; you feel you could live in it.

It tells the story of Yuri (Helena Zengel), a young girl living on the island of Carpathia, where the residents are terrorized by the creatures known as the Ochi. Her headstrong father Maxim (Willem Dafoe) is more interested in training his adoptive son Petro (Finn Wolfhard) and a band of other outcast "lost boys" to fight the Ochi than he is in paying any attention to Yuri. When she discovers a baby Ochi in a trap, and learns that the Ochi are not at all what people think they are, she sets out on a journey to bring the baby back to its parents.

Along the way, she gets help from her estranged mother Dasha (Emily Watson), a beautifully-designed character with a wooden hand, a shockingly cluttered pickup truck, and a meticulously organized cabin, with colored jars on shelves, and a basement garden given life by a skylight. I loved everything about the look of this movie, including actual matte paintings. The story is, of course, familiar, tapping into elements of E.T. and How to Train Your Dragon and others, but it's still well-told. There's a sense of melancholy and a celebration of empathy that we can sorely use today.