A24 tries its hand at a family adventure with The Legend of Ochi, and the result is a handsome film that struggles to find a pulse. Isaiah Saxon directs with a painterly eye and an obvious affection for creature features that nod to E.T. The images shimmer. The story rarely does. It keeps the studio’s clean sheen and an illustrative sense of wonder, but the emotional throughline never quite takes.
The setup is simple. Helena Zengel plays Yuri, a shy farm girl raised on an island village where tales of the ochi have turned into warnings. The ochi are orange, primate-like creatures that look like quick ginger koalas with fangs. Yuri discovers a wounded one and learns, to her surprise, that it is curious rather than hostile. Determined to get the creature home, she heads out across the landscape while her father Maxim, played by Willem Dafoe with a hard glint, hunts them down.
Saxon’s strengths are visual. The film treats hillsides, forests, and fog-choked fields like moving paintings, and the creature design is tactile enough to earn your attention. The world-building is legible without long explanations, and the camera often finds quiet rhythms that suit Yuri’s caution. When The Legend of Ochi lets images do the talking, it can be lovely.
What falters is the storytelling. The film leans on a gentle, near-silent mode that plays like a choice at first and then starts to feel like a limitation. Scenes arrive and fade without much connective tissue. Momentum slips away. The script keeps reaching for heart through tableaux rather than through character, and the bond between Yuri and the ochi deepens little beyond the initial spark.
The acting bench is deeper than the movie uses. Willem Dafoe’s Maxim has a clear function but little shading. Emily Watson and Finn Wolfhard round out the family and remain mostly on the edges. They supply credible presence and not much else, which is frustrating in a film that repeatedly hints at a richer domestic dynamic. Even Dafoe is kept at a simmer when the story would benefit from a boil.
There are flashes that work. A mid-journey rest where Yuri shares food with the creature hums with the simple pleasure of communication. A wide shot that reduces both characters to tiny figures against a massive valley captures the scale of the task without dialogue. You can see the movie Saxon is chasing in those moments, a quiet fable about fear, empathy, and stewardship.
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In the end, The Legend of Ochi is beautiful to look at and easy to admire in pieces. It is also artfully unremarkable. The 95 minute runtime should feel brisk, yet the film never finds the early groove it needs and cannot manufacture it later. There is promise here for Isaiah Saxon and for A24’s family branch, but this outing plays like a proof of concept that forgot to give its characters the same care it lavishes on its vistas.
Score: 5/10
The Legend of Ochi (2025)
- Cast: Helena Zengel, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson, Finn Wolfhard
- Director: Isaiah Saxon
- Genre: Adventure, Family
- Runtime: 95 minutes
- Rated: PG
- Release Date: April 25, 2025
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