The Legend of Ochi

In a secluded village on the island of Carpathia, a shy farm girl named Yuri is taught to fear the mysterious ochi, elusive forest creatures. When she discovers an injured baby ochi abandoned by its pack, Yuri defies her upbringing and embarks on a perilous quest to reunite it with its family. Along the way, she faces dangerous challenges and uncovers secrets about her world.

The Legend of Ochi Review

Written and directed by Isaiah Saxon, best known for a handful of music videos, The Legend of Ochi shows that the relative noob has an eye for beautifully framing scenes. However, as far as writing goes, the California native isn’t ready to work without a net, and certainly needs help when directing his own work.

                   

The Legend of Ochi possesses many interesting elements that could have come together to become a modern family film classic.

• Cute creature design? Check.
• Beautiful and mysterious backdrop with magical elements? Check.
• Quirky yet charming characters? Kinda check.

Unfortunately, its characters, character development, and plot are all rushed. Billed as an “adventure,” the antagonist’s motivation for initiating the adventure is thin, and unlike classics like The Goonies, the perils and trials are few, and the revelations are unearned. Whereas The Goonies’s every scene built upon the previous one, The Legend of Ochi’s protagonist just sort of ends up where she needs to be to receive the next bit of information so that she can easily move on to the next easily overcome set piece.

Ultimately, despite some really first-rate puppetry, beautiful cinematography, and a nuanced performance by Willem Dafoe that far surpasses the material, The Legend of Ochi is only mildly entertaining.

PARENTAL NOTES

PG Intensity

• The film’s opening action sequence is fairly intense with a lot of gunplay but little actual or effective violence. Everyone misses their shots. So, there’s a lot of yelling, running around, and loud noises, but that’s it.

Potty Mouth

• In an early scene, while berating children, Willem Dafoe’s character exclaims that one of the children’s mothers feeds their dog “hog$hit.”
• In one of the final scenes, a young boy exclaims, “oh $h!t.”

WOKE REPORT

Cynical Much

• How woke you find this movie will largely depend on your level of cynicism. Twenty years ago, few of us would have found the items I’ve listed below to be meaningful beyond their function in the plot. However, it’s not 20 years ago. It’s today, and filmmakers have done everything in their power to ruin the audience’s innocence.
• Keep in mind that the film is very underdeveloped, and so none of the following items provide much emotional impact.

Boys and Their Guns

• Willem Dafoe’s character leads a ragtag group of tween and teen boys in a pseudo-militia whose purpose is to hunt and kill ochi. Like everything else in the film, Dafoe and the boys are woefully underdeveloped, making it difficult to say with absolute certainty whether or not they are a metaphor for rural 2A supporters. However, four elements lead me to lean toward the assumption that they are.
  • The boys behave very much like the caricature in which many of us are painted, as they are never without their rifles, and seem to be reactionary automotons programmed to shoot first and ask questions never. They attempt to solve virtually every conflict by literally taking aim at anything that remotely vexes them.
  • Dafoe’s character is portrayed as rigidly dogmatic in his views on the ochi and perhaps also a bit of a religious zealot.
  • In one scene, a woman (who is his moral superior) disdainfully refers to the boys as his toy soldiers, making the film’s viewpoint pretty clear.
  • The film’s only two women never fire a gun, despite each having at least one opportunity to do so. Instead, they are the two who foster a change in perspective on the ochi, as they are the only two open-minded enough to see beyond the sights of their guns.

Moral Superiority

• The film’s perspective is that the only adult female character is the more intellectually tractable and morally superior adult, despite
  Spoiler

  her having abandoned her daughter as a very young girl.
  In fact, the movie clumsily seems to try to justify her behavior.
• The woman claims that
  Spoiler

  Dafoe’s character kept the mother away from the daughter.
  However, there’s not much in the film to support this other than her unreliable word.

Play The Fool

• Dafoe’s character (the only adult male) is fairly ridiculous. He leads a militia of children and wears silly-looking armor, but the woman, despite her character flaws listed above, is serious and should be taken as such.
• The woman beats up Dafoe’s character pretty easily.