I grew up in the age of films like ET The Extra-Terrestrial,  Gremlins, and the Goonies. These movies helped define me as a film fan. Stranger Things, the Netflix streaming series, was a great return to that era of films that I have nostalgia for. The latest film that brought me back to the early days of my childhood is a little A24 movie called The Legend of Ochi. This film had so much of what I remembered from when I was a kid. It was quite an emotional journey for me while I was sitting there watching. I think it’ll resonate with a whole new audience of kids. Maybe even the parents will get behind this sweet story.

Yuri (Helena Zengel) is a little girl who lives with her father, Maxim (Willem Dafoe), and stepbrother Petro (Finn Wolfhard) on an isolated island in the Baltic Sea.  She is taught not to go out at night because there are creatures who live in the mountains and hunt in those hours. When a pack of Ochi are out hunting one night, they themselves are being hunted, and in the confusion, a baby Ochi is left behind.  In defiance of her father, the little girl decides to help the little baby Ochi return to her mother and the place where she lives. In the process, she learns something about herself.

Willem Dafoe has been on a roll late with all the strange and odd characters he’s got to play lately.  He’s played a dead actor, played a cop in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,  he’s played a father figure/scientist in Poor Things and an occult investigator in Nosferatu You can say he’s ran the gamut of characters recently in his career. His role as an overbearing father who wants to get his daughter back might be the most straightforward of them all, despite the creatures at the forefront of the story. Like the  classic  ET The Extra-Terrestrial, there are parental struggles he deals with, similar to Dee Wallace’s character. He just wants to keep his flock safe. That’s a very honorable thing. I liked him doing this kind of role. He gets his moments to monologue like always, and they are funny. He remains one of my favorite actors working today. I always get excited to see what crazy character he’s going to play next.

Helena Zengel came on the scene acting opposite one of the greats of the last generation, Tom Hanks, in News of the World. She held her own opposite Hanks in that film now she gets to work opposite another screen Legend Dafoe. She mainly has screen time on her own secluded in her bedroom or in the woods/mountains, trying to get the little Ochi back to his pack, specifically his mom. She learns their language and has to survive cold weather, streams, and bumps and bruises on the way. Zengel is a young actress to watch in the future. She reminds me of Soarise Ronan at this age. We all know what a great actress she turned out to be, right?

The location of this movie was fascinating to me. The filmmaker Isaiah Saxon could have chosen something more in the line of American locations, but he set the film in a remote area. I guess this made for a different kind of story. Regarding the people he was dealing with in the story. The fog and cold weather played an aspect in the vibe that he was going for. I’m dure. Even though the people of the island had modern amenities like cars and cell phones, they had a closed off mindset about the world. Living in the past, per se. Especially Dafoe’s character. Community was a distant concept for him. When he saw how close the Ochi were to each other, it dawned on him how much closer he needed to be to his own family. Family is a big theme in this story.

The Ochi were an interesting race of creatures, a mix of apes and yeti from my perspective.  They are cute in a similar nature to ET in that movie. The puppet and cgi effects were pretty good. I didn’t mind that at one point, I could tell they were puppets. The little Ochi looked pretty realistic throughout the film, though. The screams and voices gave them a more authentic creature feel to them. I definitely remember the Ochi for quite a while, that’s for sure.

The Legend of Ochi is a sweet, beautiful, and touching story that focuses on different types of families.  How being part of the family dynamic means so much in this world no matter what kind of creature, human or other, they are. The cast is very good with Dafoe doing the kind of thing he is known for, and Zengel is giving another very emotional performance opposite a heavy hitter like Dafoe. The creature effects and cgi combine to give the Ochi a good look and fell to them. I liked them quite a bit. Especially the baby Ochi. This movie reminded me of a few of my favorite films from when I was a kid. A24 continues to do new and interesting things that intrigue me. I really enjoyed this film on multiple levels.. it’s my jam for sure.

4 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen