“The Legend of Ochi,” a scrappy and darkly whimsical fable about a misunderstood teenage girl on a dangerous quest, has the feeling of a film you might have stumbled on and loved as a kid. Something tactile, something fantastical and, maybe, something a little dangerous — the kind of movie you knew you probably weren’t supposed to be seeing just yet. They’re the ones that tend to linger, like that strange English dub of the Norwegian adventure “Shipwrecked” that I once saw on the Disney Channel at an impressionable age.
Perhaps this is something familiar only to those first home video generations, from a naive, pre-social media era when the movies that you loved felt like your own personal discovery and secret, no matter if it was “Star Wars” or “The NeverEnding Story.” How disappointing it was to learn later that everyone else loved them too.
It’s no surprise that “The Legend of Ochi” was made by someone (Isaiah Saxon) in this zone — an older millennial shaped by some combination of “E.T.”, “The Black Stallion” and the Palm Pictures’ Directors Label box set. Those DVDs taught many a cinephile about the transportive possibilities of music videos dreamt up by Spike Jonze, Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry for artists like Aphex Twin, Daft Punk and Björk (for whom Saxon would direct the “Wanderlust” video).
That music video energy and committed world building is evident in “Ochi,” in a positive way. It’s a description that seems to be used more pejoratively than not, like shallowly dismissing something pretty as a perfume commercial. But perhaps those people just haven’t seen the good ones.
Helena Zengel ( “News of the World” ) is the central heroine, Yuri, who lives with her father Maxim (Willem Dafoe) and a de-facto brother Petro (Finn Wolfhard) on the woodsy, old-world island of Carpathia. Maxim loves to hunt the Ochi, a species of primates that are constantly threatening the safety of the humans and their farms, and he’s trained an army of young boys to help. Yuri is largely kept off to the side, partly for her protection, partly, probably, because Maxim is a blustery alpha male who dresses up in elaborate, ancient armor for his missions. Her armor is a dirty, oversized yellow puffer jacket that could double as a sleeping bag. At home, she stews silently and listens to death metal in her room.
She’s a bit feral, which would be a cliche trope for a girl raised without a mother, but Zengel makes it work. It’s clear she doesn’t feel at home in this world, but finds a kind of purpose when she comes across an injured baby Ochi and takes it upon herself to return it to its family. The Ochi, she quickly realizes, have been misunderstood too.
It’s still a dangerous journey, which involves a humorous and slightly disgusting visit to a local supermarket, the discovery of her own long-lost mother (Emily Watson, who promptly helps Yuri brush her hair out of her eyes), and a comical, intense showdown between Watson and Dafoe. David Longstreth, of the Dirty Projectors, did the fanciful score and Evan Prosofsky is responsible for the vivid cinematography.
“The Legend of Ochi” was forged out of many influences, from Miyazaki to Amblin, and it’s the kind of ambitious swing that Hollywood doesn’t seem to take very often these days — especially not with a PG rating. That doesn’t mean it all works seamlessly, though. The emotional beats don’t seem to land as authentically as the more irreverent humor. But it’s impossible not to admire the creativity, the imagination and the care that went into making something like this, with puppetry, matte paintings and inventive graphics, for a mere $10 million.
“The Legend of Ochi,” an A24 release in theaters nationwide Friday, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association for “some language, smoking, a bloody image, thematic elements and violent content.” Running time: 96 minutes. Three stars out of four.
