The movie that The Legend of Ochi aspires to be is scribbled on a note left for a father by his runaway daughter: “I am strong and cool and I don’t care what you think.” She’s Yuri (Helena Zengel), a dissatisfied teen going through life’s daily motions on Carpathia, a speck of an island moored in the Black Sea. He’s Maxim (Willem Dafoe), the grizzled, hyper-vigilant custodian of their farming community, given to a militaristic belligerence that belies the soft heart beating under his sturdy armor. Theirs is the story of a rift between them that began forming well before its events, around the time her mother, Dasha (Emily Watson), left them; ultimately, it’s about closing that rift and mending old emotional injuries.
Writer-director Isaiah Saxon drives that brief perilously close to theoretical. It would be unfair to hold it against him that The Legend of Ochi prioritizes visuals over narrative, if not for the obvious, that film is a visual medium, then for the achievement those visuals represent. Old-timers who habitually kvetch that they don’t make ‘em like this anymore probably won’t make a peep about this ‘un, but if they did, they would be right. Virtually nobody in the movie business today would even consider, for half a second, shouldering the immense feat of shooting something like The Legend of Ochi, boasting what could be conceivably cited as the best matte paintings featured in a studio production in probably the last decade and change; they wouldn’t think twice about using computers to bring to life the winsome creature of the title, either.
But all the labor and love funneled into the images and textures comprising The Legend of Ochi’s merits function as a wall behind which its weaknesses can only try to hide. It is plot-driven but scattershot, just overstuffed enough to cause that plot to bloat, at the expense of clarity where it is most needed: in the dramatization of Yuri’s relationship to Maxim. Yuri knows Maxim fibs to all who listen about Dasha’s fate and whereabouts: He claims that she was taken years ago by the Ochi, critters he smears as ferocious, savage monsters but which would be right at home in a Star Wars universe far, far away. They look like the marriage of monkey to orangutan to koala, which means they’re unbearably cuddly. (If you’re prone to cute aggression, you’ll probably spend half the movie gripped by a rabid impulse to snuggle.) Not long after we hear this tale ourselves, we cut to a meal in Maxim and Yuri’s home, where the truth is a topic of dinner conversation: Dasha abandoned them. (Even that isn’t quite the truth.)
What purpose this serves is baffling, like putting a hat on a hat, as if The Legend of Ochi needed a willful lie to justify the distance Yuri keeps from Maxim. Frankly, the more of a human element the film introduces, the further that the bond between Yuri and the baby Ochi she discovers, injured and alone, in the surrounding hinterlands is diluted. Saxon’s work joins the likes of Alex Scharfman’s Death of a Unicorn, plus yet unreleased SXSW ‘25 entries like Pete Ohs’ The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick and Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy, as a story of man’s kinship to animals, and how that connection is imperiled by our own actions, to our own folly. It’s not that Saxon’s ensemble is unwelcome, per se; there are worse ways to water down your film’s thesis than by casting one of the great actresses of her time, or one of the sharpest up-and-comers of his, being Finn Wolfhard, remarkably grownup in terms of comportment as Petro, Maxim’s orphaned foster son. But the point The Legend of Ochi means to make can be made sans the accompaniment.
The surplus characters drag the narrative’s attention away from Yuri and Maxim, who demand it the most, and from the Ochi, itself a remarkable creation well deserving of hosannas and laurels it may never receive. Color me nostalgic for puppetry’s tactility; there is true movie magic in watching Saxon’s delightful little beast interact with Zengel, whose performance peaks during the moments where all that occupies cinematographer Evan Prosofsky’s lens is her, the Ochi, and the world. She may not be performing at all: she may just be reacting to the puppet, operated by people though it may be. That’s the power of the art form, of course. When The Legend of Ochi capitalizes on that exchange of energy between its leading human and its leading object, the effect is enrapturing. For as long as Yuri and the Ochi are left to their devices, to learn how to communicate with each other, to survive against odds and find harmony where Maxim has stirred discord with relentless fear mongering, we find ourselves transported into the movie’s world, to join in that wonderful harmony ourselves.
But when the triangle comprising Yuri, Maxim, and the Ochi is given additional siding by Petro and Dasha, not to mention Maxim’s loyal pack of boy soldiers ready to follow his order if it means exterminating the animals, the film suffers. Pulling focus from what is essential to The Legend of Ochi, from acting to artifice, throws the experience into haze–and not the fantasy kind, either, but the distended, stumbling kind that lets the pace go limp as the themes go slack. It’s to Saxon’s great credit as a visionary that The Legend of Ochi justifies the experience anyway, on the strength of its rare craftsmanship alone.
Director: Isaiah Saxon Writer: Isaiah Saxon Stars: Helena Zengel, Willem Dafoe, Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson Release Date: April 18, 2025 (limited); April 25, 2025 (wide)
Bostonian culture journalist Andy Crump covers the movies, beer, music, and being a dad for way too many outlets, perhaps even yours. He has contributed to Paste since 2013. You can find his collected work at his personal blog. He’s composed of roughly 65% craft beer.
