‘The Legend of Ochi’ Review: A24 Fantasy Adventure Is Lovingly Crafted Yet Oddly Inert

What to do about a work like Isaiah Saxon’s “The Legend of Ochi?” A curious little fantasy adventure built around the scruffy titular creature that leads a lonely youth on a magical journey, the film boasts intense attention to detail through impressive practical craft and puppetry that should make for a wondrous cinematic experience. But that craft is unfortunately never able to cover up a prevailing lifelessness.

The acclaimed music video director’s debut feature, which premiered back at the Sundance Film Festival and is produced by A24, does break the heart and pulls on plenty of its strings. Just not in the way that it intends. Ultimately, Saxton’s story struggles to assemble its beautiful parts into a moving whole.

This isn’t for lack of effort, as the aforementioned craft breathes plenty of life into the well-worn path that “The Legend of Ochi” takes us down. You can practically feel the meticulous textures of the team’s creations. But the journey itself largely slips through your fingers. No matter how you try to hold tight to its promise, it amounts to very little. 

Set in the modern-day fictional world of Carpathia, a remote island where magical creatures lurk in the lush greenery, the film follows the young Yuri (Helena Zengel) whose rather cartoonishly hyper-masculine father Maxim (Willem Dafoe) wishes he had a son instead and cares only for hunting the mythical being known as the Ochi. In a strong early scene, we see just how much he can miss the forest for the trees in his pursuit. This causes a schism when Yuri comes into contact with an adorable baby Ochi and sets out on an adventure to bring them home.

To do so, she’ll try to locate her missing mother (played by an underutilized yet excellent Emily Watson of the recent “Dune: Prophecy”) while her father and his followers (which includes Finn Wolfhard in a small role) haphazardly attempt to track her down. Shenanigans ensue and Yuri starts to grow closer to the Ochi, though the audience may drift further away the longer the film carries on. 

Drawing plenty of what can be generously called inspiration from films like Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” Saxon’s screenplay comes to life most in the small moments that are familiar, but work for a reason. A first encounter between Yuri and the Ochi or a series of confessions about buried familial pain ought to resonate. But the experience gets caught up in the story mechanically moving from one set piece to the next. You want to get swept up in the ride, but it perpetually holds you at a distance. 

It’s in this distance where the heartbreak sets in. We can feel all the various topological layers of this world, but few of the emotional ones. The effects artists do remarkable work, but it’s in service of a story that never quite knows what it seems to want to do.

There is a welcome whimsy and lovely framing to many of the visuals that recall the work of Wes Anderson, including one early sequence in a grocery store. And there’s a potentially complex thematic throughline about living in harmony with nature. There just isn’t that same harmony in the story itself. What should be big moments near the end don’t have room to breathe and the climax, a predictable yet sweet one, feels unearned and as rushed as the rapids the characters nearly get washed away in. No matter how convincingly Dafoe will belt out some genuinely funny lines as he sets forth in full armor or how engaging Zengel is when just getting to play off of the expressed puppetry, the film can’t rise to their level.

It’s impossible to outright dismiss “The Legend of Ochi?,” as the craft is too remarkable for that and audiences, be they young or old, can find much to appreciate in the puppetry of Ochi alone. Similarly, Saxton is a director with promise whose command of visuals is impressive. It’s just that while you can’t see any of the strings being used on the effects, you can see the story being manipulated. You may fall in love with Ochi all the same, but you can only wish you’d gone on a richer journey together. 

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