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The Legend of Ochi, starring Willem Dafoe and Helena Zengel, directed by Isaiah Saxon
Trailer: A24

The Legend of Ochi
Directed by Isaiah Saxon
Rated PG
Found 18 April 2025
#LegendOfOchi

Derivative and disjointed, The Legend of Ochi is a mixed bag of ambitious filmmaking as a new talent takes the director’s chair.

The Creation of Adam

It's a strange little movie that’s part E.T., part Dracula, part Ray Harryhausen, part Terry Gilliam and part Don Quixote. With a mix like that, a natural question is to wonder for whom this PG-rated adventure is intended. The answer might well be for filmmakers. It’s not likely to hold the interest of young children and it’s not quite sophisticated enough for teens and older crowds.

But the making of this production — done on an extremely modest $10 million budget — is quite interesting.

It was shot with an emphasis on practical (on-set) effects and the fictional Ochi (a breed of ape residing on the island of Carpathia in the Black Sea) are all animatronics, modern puppetry.

Oh, the irony. It’s funny how, as the baby Ochi is introduced, he looks digital. But he’s not. He’s a puppet. While no Ochi were harmed in a hailstorm of ones and zeroes, there is still a limited use of CGI effects.

Ochi was filmed in part on location in Romania — Transylvania — which of course throws a Dracula vibe, aided and abetted by a group of people who feel they’re being terrorized by the Ochi, with the creatures taking the blame for the loss of livestock, other damages and even the death of a woman named Dasha. (More about her in a minute.)

The opening 15 minutes closely track with E.T., right down to a line spoken by a young, innocent child who’s trying to befriend a baby Ochi, "I’m not going to hurt you." There’s even an E.T.-like moment when this young girl’s finger touches the tip of the baby Ochi’s finger. This time, it’s not a fingertip that lights up, but rather a vibrant blue caterpillar that crosses over from one finger to the other.

That girl is Yuri (Helena Zengel, News of the World) and she’s the daughter of Maxim (Willem Dafoe, Nosferatu) and Dasha (Emily Watson, Dune: Prophecy). The strangely complex relationship between her parental units is where The Legend of Ochi starts to derail.

Island of the Ochi

Here’s the biggest problem with The Legend of Ochi: The Ochi are better defined than the humans. This notion is further supported by real-world tie-in merchandising. A24, the studio distributing the movie in the U.S., is also selling In Search of the Ochi, a "Special Report" from Zoographic International dated September 1982 (E.T. was released in June 1982, yet another conspicuous parallel between the two). The phenomenally detailed field guide includes a fold-out map of the fictional island of Carpathia.

Counter this exhaustive amount of detail and thought about the Ochi with the humans, who, aside from Yuri, are quite a scrambled lot.

Maxim, Yuri’s neglectful father and Dasha’s (possibly) abusive husband, dons gladiator-style armor. It’s a disheveled, haphazard appearance that falls short of an ingenious gentleman and yet Maxim’s been charged to lead a gang of young (and not so lost) boys who have been seconded as his army. Their parents have entrusted them to Maxim in hopes of him making something out of them. Why they would have such trust in this oddball is a headscratcher. But this fictional world is overloaded with humans making questionable decisions and displaying all manner of mental illnesses.

Maxim’s an odd duck and it’s never clear what drives him. He makes up crap about people, places and things. Those Don Quixote screams get louder; he seems to be perpetually tilting at windmills. Who knows, it’s quite possible he’s lying about his army of boys. Maybe something more sinister is afoot there, too. But, his one-sided view of the world clouds his ability to take in information. After Yuri runs away with her baby Ochi, Maxim jumps to the conclusion the Ochi kidnapped her. After all, why would anybody want to flee the friendly confines of such a lovable loon?

Yuri has a taste for heavy metal. Maxim looks over at a band’s poster on her bedroom wall. The tagline: "Destroy the father."

Nothing seems to register in Maxim's head.

Dasha, Yuri’s mom, has a wooden hand. According to Dasha, Maxim cut off her hand. Maxim counters with the argument he was saving her life. It’s possible the two are complementary, but so many things indicate they’re opposing. As it happens, Dasha has spent decades studying the Ochi (perhaps a key source of the divide between Dasha and Maxim is her reverence for the creatures and his disdain). Her studies have focused on their language, their vocal patterns and the musical attributes of their communications. (Cue thoughts of Gremlins, particularly the musical purring of Gizmo. While at it, the Mogwai, Gremlins and E.T. were all animatronic as well, not digital.)

Yuri clearly fills the role of the wise, sage youth. She’s the Elliot of the story. She’s the audience’s throughline to understanding the movie’s world, or at least trying to understand it. Trust her. Don’t trust the adults.

Oh, yeah. And there’s a kid named Petro (Finn Wolfhard, Stranger Things). He’s almost completely inconsequential as Yuri’s adopted brother and Maxim’s eldest soldier.

Strange New World

This is the feature debut of writer/director Isaiah Saxon, who’s made music videos for artists including Bjork and Grizzly Bear. It’s certainly an impressive production on many levels, but there’s room to grow in the area of (human) character definition and storytelling.

It’s clear from the outset Saxon is interested in world building and hopefully Legend of Ochi is merely a humble beginning with bigger things — preferably outside the CGI-bloated realms of Marvel and DC — yet to come. (Perhaps ominously, the Russo brothers — whose best work is under the Marvel shingle — are among Ochi’s producers.)

But Legend of Ochi might suffer a bit from "big eyes" syndrome. Perhaps Saxon set out to do too much in 96 minutes, leading to a lot of disconnected thoughts and abandoned ideas. Maxim might not be the trustworthy village oddball; he might be emblematic of a village full of oddballs. While foraging for food, Yuri stows her Ochi friend in a backpack and hits the local Kurkamart, a supermarket in which everybody seems to be in a bored trance until the shrieks of the baby Ochi stir a teen clerk to grab a rifle and start firing.

As part of Saxon’s world building, the second half gets more interesting as the focus shifts away from Maxim’s madness and the village of quirky humans. Yuri gets bitten by her baby Ochi friend, but it’s a bite that strengthens their bond. That, along with Yuri sporting toy fangs to relate to the Ochi, is oh so Dracula.

In the Name of Love

A side effect of that bite is Yuri develops a taste for bugs and she also begins to communicate with her ape companion in its lyrical language. It comes natural to Yuri; Dasha taught her the language in what’s become a buried memory of her earlier childhood.

All of this leads to a thought that may or may not have been planted by Saxon.

At one point, Dasha warns Yuri the Ochi can’t be friends with humans and humans can’t keep them as pets. She goes ominous with an anecdote. If you return a bird to its nest, it gets tossed back out because it’s been tainted by the stench of humans, she says.

Yuri’s goal, though, is to return the baby Ochi to its family and try to find some peace between humans and Ochi. That could be easier said than done. In a cave that leads to a lush, green Ochi village, there’s line art painted on the walls. Drawings of humans shooting at the Ochi. How that art got there is not clear.

This all sets up that thought. As Yuri approaches the Ochi village with her baby ape companion, she comes in peace and the Ochi don’t seem the least bit alarmed by Yuri’s human presence. That fear sets in when Maxim’s army of semi-lost boys start firing their rifles at the Ochi.

Yeah. That’ll do it.

Then, coming in from the other side is Dasha, armed with her flute and the songs of the Ochi language.

In the thick of all this, after having seen that cave art and the calm of the Ochi as Yuri approaches, that thought sets in: All it takes is not knowing to begin again.

It’s an elegant thought. A subtle prize at the end of an otherwise strange and oh so very unsubtle little journey.

• Originally published at MovieHabit.com.