The legend of Ochi It was released at the Sunday 2025 Film Festival. This initial review was scheduled for its world premiere embargo.
A child who makes friends with a creature that everyone else considers too dangerous to be a friend of him is the backbone of many memorable stories about the age of majority, since Liberate Willy and The black stallion to East time and How to train your dragon. It is the maximum fantasy of young people: simply get A strange, misunderstood and unique creature as no one else can do it.
The almost fantasy movie, adventure and almost family drama of A24 The legend of OchiFrom the screenwriter and director Isaiah Saxon, follow that line. The creature in question is an Ochi, an animal similar to an exclusive ape of the film and originally from the Eastern European Carpats. And the girl is Yuri (Helena Zengel), a lonely teenager who is still dealing with the consequences of a family tragedy.
While some moments in the film arouse the same magic and feeling of connection as the classic films of this specific film subgenre, the family drama and the plot of the creatures never fit at all. While these elements often go together like hypo and stop, they end up undermining each other in The legend of Ochi.
[Ed. note: This post contains setup spoilers for The Legend of Ochi.]
Image: A24
The legend of Ochi It takes place in a remote village of the Carpatos, where the Ochi, mythical creatures that look a bit like and simio hybrids with sharp teeth, roam the mountains and forests. Yuri feels isolated from his father, Maxim (Willem Dafoe), who has proposed to recruit the youth of the village hoping to expel the Ochi. Maxim blames the Ochi for his failed marriage, because his wife abandoned him after losing his son in the attacks of the Ochi.
Yuri clashes with Maxim and Petro (Strangest things'Finn Wolfhard), an orphan that Maxim welcomed and is raising to become an experienced Ochi hunter. After Yuri finds an Ochi baby, he decides to flee and return the creature to his home in the forest. She joins the creature and is also face -to -face with her mother (Emily Watson), who now lives alone in an isolated cabin and studies the Ochi, as well as the lost mother of Hicm, Valka, in How to train your dragon 2.
The relationship between Yuri and the baby Ochi is the thread of the film. The creature is adorable and the use of puppets by Saxon to give life makes its interactions more tactile and credible. He is charming when Ochi communicates with small murmurs and grunts, and even more so when Yuri begins to understand what those sounds mean. Zengel does a great job acting against the puppet, and really sells Yuri's almost stubborn conviction that she can It is linked to this creature and march safely to Ochi territory to take it home, even when your mother warns you that it would probably mean the baby's death, because the adult ochi will reject it.
Image: A24
While Yuri and Ochi are captivating, Saxon doesn't spend enough time with them. Nor does he spend enough time to the complicated family dynamic that motivates Yuri to flee in the first place. This last fault ends up undermining the movie. Yuri's family has supposedly been separated by Ochi, but spectators do not have much idea of what their family was before the attack, and their current reasons seem confused and contradictory.
When a family film divides the family during most execution time, it is important to make sure that the public still understands who these characters are and what they mean to each other. But Saxon does not take the time to establish them as people before sending Yuri to his adventure, and the rest of the film only has some interactions between them.
Image: A24
Even so, the actors achieve quite well some small and moving moments when they are together. Yuri's mother gently braids her hair while Yuri rests after hurting himself. A late conversation between Yuri and Maxim is a beautiful setback to its first interaction, one that feels genuine, while father and daughter try to relate to each other at the end of the film. But there are not enough moments of this type to really sell family history.
Since Saxon does not spend enough time with Yuri and Ochi or Yuri and his family, the two most important emotional arches of the film never completely join. The end, which is supposed to join them at a great cathartic moment, does not seem deserved. There is a slight stab of relief, but it is immediately confusing for a feeling of Wait, how did this happen? Because there is not enough significant accumulation. All threads are there, and they are even intertwined with each other. But they are never tight enough or united to keep the story together.
The legend of Ochi He arrives at theaters on April 25.