THE STORY – In a remote village on the island of Carpathia, a farm girl named Yuri is raised to fear an animal species known as Ochi. But when Yuri discovers a wounded baby Ochi has been left behind, she escapes on an adventure to bring him home.
THE CAST – Helena Zengel, Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson & Willem Dafoe
THE TEAM – Isaiah Saxon (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 96 Minutes
“Wonderment” is a difficult emotion for any artist to inspire. Unlike those working in, say, comedy or horror – where success is measured in laughs and screams – giving an audience a feeling of awe is a far more elusive goal. It’s clear that writer-director Isaiah Saxon wishes to conjure an astonished reaction with his film “The Legend of Ochi.” While elements of its construction are certainly impressive, the film is far too preoccupied with internal mythology and whimsical aesthetics, neglecting to lay a necessary relatable base upon which its story can be supported.
In the fantastical world of the film, the ochi are a breed of reclusive creatures who inhabit the forests of an island somewhere in the Black Sea. They resemble some sort of primate-fox hybrid, and despite their inviting, fluffy appearance, they’re a predatory species that feeds upon the island’s livestock. As such, hunting the ochi is a common practice for island dwellers and serves as a rite of passage for their young folk. During one of these nighttime pursuits, Yuri (Helena Zengel) encounters a baby ochi on her very first hunt. The next day, Yuri ventures out on her own to check her traps and finds the tiny creature injured and alone. Despite her father Maxim’s (Willem Dafoe) warnings about the ochi’s ferocity, Yuri decides to care for the frightened critter. Of course, it’s not long before her furry stowaway is discovered by her semi-adopted brother Petro (Finn Wolfhard), and Yuri sets off on her own to reunite the little ochi with its family.
The ochi themselves are spectacularly realized. Brought to life with puppets and animatronics – and without the aid of CGI – they have a substance and heft to them that no computer could ever replicate. This helps Yuri’s interactions with the baby ochi feel completely real, which helps Zengel’s performance. After all, any actor would prefer to act with an actual physicalized version of their otherworldly scene partner rather than a tennis ball on a stick. Yuri’s compassion and desire to protect the ochi are much more believable because of it. The fluffy creations move with a sense of weight, and their emotions are perfectly realized by their hyper-expressive faces. The baby ochi, in particular, is capable of looking scared, calm, pleased, angered, or any mix of reactions. The sounds they make are also the perfect middle ground between otherworldly and somehow familiar. It’s smart for the film to lead with the ochi in both the title and the marketing; they’re by far the most laudable aspect of the film.
The world they inhabit is similarly handsomely designed. Mist-covered and mysterious, the island is a collection of mountains, woods, and bodies of water, plus farms and homes. It’s never clearly established, but the location has a 1980s Soviet feel to it. Some of the abodes and stores are reminiscent of the carefully curated worlds of Wes Anderson, which is about the highest compliment a creative production designer can receive. In this case, Jason Kisvarday (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) is the mastermind behind these sets, and it can’t be understated how crucial he is to any success the film achieves. Helping him bring the movie to life is David Longstreth’s majestic, ever-present musical score, which imbues the story with a grand sense of adventure.
Zengel is a captivating lead who’s easy to root for; she’s headstrong, but the film never loses sight of the fact that she’s an impulsive child. She charges into situations without thinking them through, which is an understandable way for her to fall into plot-furthering mishaps. Dafoe is, as always, hilariously idiosyncratic, giving his blustering character an underlying level of sadness that does a lot more to layer his character than the screenplay does.
This leads to the film’s greatest shortcoming: it simply doesn’t do enough work to make the characters or the story compelling. It spends so much time building up the ochi and making sure the audience has enough information about them to understand their ways that, as a result, the thinly drawn humans feel comparatively hollow. Yuri and the ochi quite literally sprint through the story with only occasional pauses for additional facts about the ochi, with the screenplay favoring cryptozoological myth-building over simple human backstory. Things aren’t helped by the odd language stylings employed by the screenplay. There’s a strangely glib quality to the way that characters speak. Even in instances that should feel important to the story and the characters, they’ll often undercut the moment by simply calling things “stupid.” It’s clearly supposed to be funny, but instead, it’s just distractingly cynical and odd. This choice of phrasing might be excusable if it were only ascribed to the kid characters, but Dafoe’s Maxim speaks similarly.
Due to the screenplay’s shortcomings, the film’s conclusion feels unsatisfying and deflating. It’s evidently trying to be sweepingly emotional in the vein of family classics like “E.T.” and “Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey.” But instead, the proceedings just feel forced. Unfortunately, the film places far too much emphasis on the “ochi” part of its title and not enough on the “legend.”
