My review of the charming, bleak kid's movie The Legend of Ochi is now available for everyone!
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At Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place, my other site, I have a feature where patrons can pay me a modest sum to watch and write about a movie of their choice.
One of the most popular options involves children’s movies from the 1980s that are too dark, perverse, and morbid to be suitable for younger viewers.
I’ve covered a lot of wonderfully fucked-up kiddie films for the column, including, but not limited to, The Black Cauldron, The Secret of NIMH, The Dark Crytal, Labyrinth, Return to Oz, The Last Unicorn, Follow That Bird, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The Peanut Butter Solution.
Most recently, I had the surreal pleasure of watching and writing about Will Vinton’s 1985 claymation masterpiece The Adventures of Mark Twain. Rather than sugarcoat the rascally writer’s complicated life, it leaned into the despair, portraying the icon of folksy Americana as a grief-plagued, suicidal figure of infinite darkness who is waiting impatiently for death so that he can finally be reunited with his late wife.
A24’s The Legend of Ochi hit me in the nostalgic sweet spot by combining two subgenres I remember fondly from my childhood: kiddie movies that are way too dark and disturbing to be even remotely appropriate for younglings and Spielbergian creature features about kids encountering fantastical creatures realized through puppetry, stop motion and other forms of movie magic.
The writing and directing debut of Isaiah Saxon is a defiantly arty fantasy for children who enjoy the work of filmmakers such as Terrence Malick, David Lynch, and David Cronenberg.
The Legend of Ochi is arthouse fare for elementary school students with an almost painfully cute little scamp at its core that is otherwise purposefully grim and strange. It believes in the proposition that the best children’s movies are, at the very least, moderately traumatizing.
Willem Dafoe is Willem Dafoe to the Nth degree in a screamingly theatrical, scenery-chewing turn as a crazed leader of a platoon of child beast-hunting brigade. Fellow arthouse legend Emily Watson is similarly grim as the protagonist’s eccentric mother.
The Steven Spielberg-fueled kiddie creature feature boom of the 1980s juxtaposed childhood innocence with fantastical elements and beasties beyond our imagination.
They took place overwhelmingly in sad suburbs, poignant in their banality. The Legend of Ochi, in sharp contrast, takes place in a strange and foreign world, a fairy tale realm of the Brothers Grimm variety.
More specifically, it takes place on the island of Carpathia, the home of creatures known as the Ochi, who suggest a cross between Wookees, monkeys, and my dog Champion.
I was biased in favor of The Legend of Ochi because its furry little hero bears an uncanny resemblance to my teacup Yorkie. They both have big, soulful eyes and funny sideways bat ears and are tiny and adorable.
I can’t think of anything in the world cuter or more lovable than my puppy, so I was predisposed to being charmed by a mythical creature that looks like a cross between Gizmo from Gremlins and my pet.
Helena Zengel is defiantly tough and unsentimental as Yuri, a little girl who has been forced to grow up fast due to the dysfunction and selfishness of her parents.
She’s taught to fear and loathe ochi, which are played by humans as adults and realized through puppetry and animatronics in baby form.
That’s another key to the film’s success as a Reagan-era throwback: the filmmakers eschew CGI in favor of practical effects, puppets, and old-school movie magic.
Yuri learns that she has been lied to when she finds a baby ochi in a trap. The lonely, alienated little girl forms a powerful bond with the cooing, crooning creature. She develops maternal feelings toward the gentle, misunderstood creature and sets about finding its family to facilitate a mother-child reunion.
In the grand tradition of movies like Gremlins and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, she must keep her little friend a secret from a world that is quick to judge, dissect, and experiment ominously but slow to understand and appreciate.
Yuri develops a hideous, Cronenbergian skin condition and reconnects with a mother who is less a traditional matriarch than a forest witch.
Children’s movies don’t get much artier or weirder than The Legend of Ochi, an oddball arthouse outlier chockablock with mournful morbidity. I’m generally irritated when movies are sold based on the studios that put them out rather than actors, directors, screenwriters, or even producers.
With The Legend of Ochi, it makes sense to market it primarily on the reputation, brand, and history of A24, the company behind such hits as Everything Everywhere All At Once, Uncut Gems, Talk to Her, Hereditary, The Whale, and Moonlight.
The Legend of Ochi is A24 to the core. It serves a dual audience of hip kids who appreciate arthouse films and parents nostalgic for a time when they were young and free, and the world was not quite so terrible.
The Legend of Ochi is a children’s film that’s both cute and grim, adorable and yet deeply rooted in the inexorable horrors of contemporary life.
Three and a half stars out of five