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“The Legend of Ochi”

A24 Films

Directed by Isaiah Saxon

Starring Helena Zengel, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson and Finn Wolfhard

Rated PG

 

2 ½ Stars

 

The Legend of Ochi is a magical fable, of sorts, where a teenage girl defies her father’s wishes in order to rescue a helpless animal and return it to its mother. The creature is an ochi, a cryptid that looks like a mix of a gremlin and a mountain baboon. The young ones are particularly cute, which helps explain why the girl would throw caution to the wind to embark on such a perilous adventure.

Well, it explains things a little. 

The Legend of the Ochi is a frustrating movie. It does a lot of things very well, only to falter with the basic story elements. We get a plucky heroine named Yuri (Helena Zengel) whose father (William Dafoe) is the village hunter who has dedicated his life to exterminating the ochi. He leads a small teenage militia on nightly hunts, but can’t see that his daughter doesn’t share in his bloodlust.

When she sneaks out to take the ochi baby back to its mother, the father thinks that Yuri has been abducted by the creature and decides to mount a rescue party. We’re left with the image of seven preteen boys with hunting rifles chasing after a lone girl–it’s more than a little bit creepy.

That’s just one of my many frustrations with this movie. One the one hand, I enjoyed the movie because it’s reminiscent of a lot of movies from the 1980s where a teenager has a magical adventure in spite of her parent’s warnings. The fact that the creature seems to be somewhat magical only adds to the movie’s sense of wonder.

On the other hand, the film is filled with a lot of messy plot elements. For example, along the way the girl meets her mother (Emily Watson) and learns that she abandoned her father because, well, that’s never made quite clear. Mother, it turns out, isn’t much better than her ochi-obsessed father.

Despite these odd story elements, the film does bring a genuine sense of wonder to the screen. This island in the middle of the Black Sea certainly feels like a place where magical creatures could be hiding up in the mountains, stoking fears from the superstitious villagers below. Credit director Isaiah Saxon for the world building, much of which was accomplished through individually painted backdrops that really bring this island to life.

More credit goes to the puppeteers for the ochi design. The little creature is quite cute, although perhaps not completely realistic. The fur is a little too perfectly manicured when seen in close up. You’re always aware that this is a puppet, not a living creature, which makes it difficult to truly buy into the bond between Yuri and the baby ochi.

I also wish that the magical elements were more pronounced. After being accidentally bitten, Yuri finds that she can communicate with the ochi. The result is a very fun scene, but one that is mostly abandoned when the hunters start to close in. It’s disappointing to have magic introduced and then only employed tangentially in story resolution.

Ultimately, this is a semi-appealing family film. The heroine is plucky and the Ochi is cute, so I can understand the appeal for young audiences. The magical elements are also quite appealing. But the message of family togetherness that shows up in the end isn’t really earned, so the movie simply doesn’t have much resonance.

“The Legend of Ochi” is one of those hit-and-miss movies that entertains while in the theater, but won’t really stay with your kids after the popcorn has been devoured.

 

Movie reviews by Sean, “The Movie Guy,” are published each week in The Port Arthur News and The Orange Leader. Sean welcomes your comments via email at sean@seanthemovieguy.com You can get more of Sean’s reviews by subscribing to the 2 Movie Guys podcast.