The Legend of Ochi

The Legend of Ochi (/ˈoʊtʃi/) is a 2025 American fantasy adventure film written and directed by Isaiah Saxon in his feature film debut and starring Helena Zengel, Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson, and Willem Dafoe. It tells the story of a farm girl on a fictional Black Sea island who discovers a wounded baby primate-like creature and works to return it to its family while learning their language and avoiding a hunting party led by her father and her adopted brother.^[6]

It was released in the United States by A24 in limited theaters on April 18, 2025 before a wide release on April 25. The film was met with positive reviews.

In a remote village on the Black Sea island of Carpathia, local inhabitants have hunted reclusive primate-like creatures known as the Ochi for generations. A fanatical farmer/hunter named Maxim leads a hunting party of mostly young boys, including his disaffected daughter Yuri and reserved son Petro.

During one of these hunts, a baby Ochi gets lost and injured and later ends up spotted by Yuri who frees its leg from a trap and treats it back at her home in secret. Discovering it to be a sapient creature instead of the violent monster she was taught Ochi to be after it doesn't eat her pet caterpillar after she asks it not to, she sets off on a journey to return it to its family, with Petro ultimately not intervening despite sees her leave with the baby Ochi due to realizing she has no reason to trust him or the others due to their subservience to their father.

When Maxim discovers she's left and finds signs of the Ochi's presence in her room, he rallies the children to find her under the assumption the Ochi have abducted her, despite her having left a note behind along with her grandfather’s knife, a gift from Maxim she rejected. Meanwhile, Petro quietly separates from his father's group to seek out his and Yuri's distant mother Dasha who lives in a cabin in the mountains and had previously left Maxim after they'd come a disagreement regarding the Ochi.

Coming upon a supermarket she was never allowed to enter by Maxim, Yuri ventures inside with the baby Ochi only for it to quickly be discovered, causing a commotion that ends with Yuri stealing a car after being bitten by the baby Ochi in a panic, poisoning her arm. As they take refuge near a pond, a weakening Yuri discovers she can understand and replicate the baby Ochi's vocalizations before she falls into a caged hole in the ground.

Yuri is found by Dasha who treats her injuries at her home with the blood of the Carpathian brown bats that have developed an immunity to Ochi venom having previously lost her own hand after a similar incident, forcing her to use a prosthetic after Maxim cut her arm off. She corrects Yuri's assumption that the venom was what allowed her to understand the Ochi's language, stating she had shown it to her as a baby, having been studying it herself and its similarity to music. The two lament the Ochi's deep connection to each other compared to their failure to connect with other humans, though Yuri leaves angrily after Dasha refuses to aid her in returning the baby Ochi to its family despite having mapped out their territory, as she concludes they would reject it for being near humans and kill her for encroaching on their territory.

Maxim and his group arrive at the cabin in search of Yuri, having been called in by Petro, who'd seen Dasha with Yuri earlier. Dasha talks with Maxim inside as he tries to insist he still loves her and cares for his family while she rebukes him for his militant ways, the indoctrination of children, and what he did to her hand. Their conversation turns violent as Maxim discovers Dasha let her go, blaming her for leaving their family and she drives him out of her house, only stopping due to being held at gunpoint by Maxim's hunters, who've raided her storage space to find her maps of the Ochi's territory. While ecstatic to finally know where their territory really is, Maxim is horrified to realize Yuri is headed there.

Yuri manages to reunite with the baby Ochi after using his language. As they make camp, the baby Ochi speaks about missing its mother while Yuri claims to not miss her own, frustrated by both her parents. Dasha comes to regret her coldness towards Yuri, seeing it as her taking her anger towards Maxim out on her, and ventures to find her. Upset by his encounter with his former wife, Maxim advises Petro to not rely on anyone, as he believes it leads to weakness.

Yuri manages to construct a makeshift raft for herself and the baby Ochi to travel down a river into a cave system where the Ochi live. They see Yuri and the baby Ochi approach through holes in the mountain, but close them up with rocks after seeing Yuri. The two are then shot at by the hunters, causing them to fall into the water and nearly drown before they manage to climb onto a nearby rock. Disgusted at Maxim being completely callous to her almost dying because of his hunters and his clumsy attempts to connect with her, Yuri jumps into the river with the baby Ochi and swims into the caves. Petro finally stand up to Maxim for driving his family away with his obsession with the Ochi, but he dismisses him and decides to head into the cave alone to not endanger the children, removing his ceremonial armor to allow him to swim.

In the caves, armed with an axe, Maxim searches for Yuri, who evades him, the pair being noticed by nearby Ochi, who are angered at the presence of outsiders. After Maxim’s leg stuck inside a pile of logs, Yuri goes back to help him. Unable to push the log off him, she calls for the Ochi in their language, startling Maxim. Yuri apologizes for having rejected Maxim's gift to her and asks her to trust him even if he doesn’t understand her, while he solemnly admits he bought it as a gas station because he wanted to impress her. He and the baby Ochi interact and he ceases hostilities with it, as Yuri manages to free him.

The boys head into a cave on a log, coming across Dasha, who observes cave paintings made by the Ochi depicting their violent history with humans. Yuri, Maxim and the baby Ochi head to the center of the mountain, where there is a large clearing the Ochi live.

Noticing the boys have taken a sniper position on a nearby cliff edge, Maxim attempts to defuse the situation only for the boys to open fire anyway as Petro lunges towards one of the boys. The angered Ochi are calmed by Dasha's use of a flute to simulate their language, followed by Yuri using their language, allowing her and Maxim to peacefully return the baby Ochi to its mother. Dasha then makes amends with Yuri as the Ochi vocalize around them in celebration.

The cast list is sorted into the different categories during the end credits.

The Family:

• Helena Zengel as Yuri, a farm girl who found the baby Ochi
• Willem Dafoe as Maxim, a farmer/hunter and the father of Yuri who hunts the Ochi
• Emily Watson as Dasha, the estranged mother of Yuri who knows the Ochi language and sports a prosthetic left hand due to an incident that Maxim caused regarding an Ochi bite
• Finn Wolfhard as Petro, the older adopted brother of Yuri

The Boys:

• Răzvan Stoica as Ivan, a member of Maxim's hunting party whose father owned a timber camp
• Carol Bors as Oleg, a member of Maxim's hunting party whose Uncle Belka won't go out with his herd and stays inside drinking
• Andrei Antoniu Anghel as Vlad, a member of Maxim's hunting party
• David Andrei Baltatu as Gleb, a member of Maxim's hunting party whose farm is missing its five geese and three cats
• Eduard Mihail Oancea as Pavel, a member of Maxim's hunting party whose father's best stud was "bled dry" by the Ochi
• Tomas Otto Ghela as Tudor, a member of Maxim's hunting party

The Ochi:

• Paul Manalatos as the Ochi vocal effects
• Robert Tygner as Lead Ochi Puppeteer
• Caroline Bowman, Lynn Robertson Bruce, Iestyn Evans, and Susan Beattie as Ochi Puppeteers
• Zoe Midgley as Mother Ochi
• Alexandra Dușa, Ana Maria Cucută, Alexandru Condurat, and Anna L. Coats as the vocal effects of the Adult Ochis

The Carpathians:

• Ștefan Burlacu as Victor
• Emanuel Stoicescu as Richard
• Ioana Ștefan as Mommy Shopper #1
• Meara O'Reilly as Mommy Shopper #2
• Andreea Mustață as Lady Cop
• Gabriel Spahiu as Dude Cop
• Puiu-Mircea Lăscuș as Drunk Man
• Victoria Dicu as Ivan's Mother

On November 10, 2021, it was reported that Isaiah Saxon would write and direct The Legend of Ochi, a fantasy adventure film based on his own original story, and will star Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson, Finn Wolfhard, and Helena Zengel, with A24 fully financing and serving as worldwide distributor.^[7][8]

Some scenes of the film were shot in Transylvania, in the Apuseni Mountains, at the Bâlea Lake and on the Transfăgărășan road. Principal photography started in Romania on November 1, 2021, and continued at the Castel Film Studios until December 15, 2021.^[9][10] The film makes use of puppetry, animatronics, computer animation and matte paintings. The titular creature was a puppet by Encyclopedia Pictura, operated by 7 performers. The film had a budget of $10 million.^[11][12]

The Legend of Ochi premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2025.^[6] It had a wide theatrical release in the United States on April 25, 2025,^[13] following a limited release in New York City and Los Angeles on April 18.^[14] It was previously scheduled to be released on February 28, 2025, but it was delayed in January 2025 after Saxon lost his home in the Southern California wildfires.^[15]

In the United States and Canada, The Legend of Ochi was released alongside Until Dawn, The Accountant 2, and the re-release of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, and was projected to gross around $5 million from 1,150 theaters in its opening weekend.^[3]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 75% of 135 critics' reviews are positive. The website's consensus reads: "A marvel of state-of-the-art puppetry and visual effects, The Legend of Ochi elevates its predictable story with enchanting presentation."^[16] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 67 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[17]

Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "The Legend of Ochi, the rare A24 family film, is a charming throwback to adventure movies of the '80s like The Neverending Story and The Dark Crystal, complete with original puppetry that reportedly contains not an ounce of CGI manipulation".^[18] Carlos Aguilar of Variety commented: "With unique enough lore and a unique style, Saxon avoids making a derivate fable. Ochi prompts one to think, 'How did they do that?' only to be even more incredulous when realizing the techniques employed. That's film sorcery".^[19] Jesse Harsenger of The Guardian said, "This should be a deeply touching moment of intergenerational, cross-species understanding. Yet it’s treated more as a technical triumph than a truly emotional one, and that’s true of the film as a whole. The soul of the movie isn’t particularly in the human/creature relationship at its center, but in the stunning craftsmanship that surrounds (and in the creature’s case, creates) them. If that makes the movie less of a high-water mark than a masterpiece like ET, it’s also an anomaly in a world where US children’s films are so intent on prodding and goading their audiences into predetermined reactions. Sometimes genuine awe is enough."^[20]

Justin Lowe of The Hollywood Reporter wrote "It’s evident that The Legend of Ochi’s production values far exceed what might be expected from a reported $10 million budget, and demonstrate that Saxon can deliver a fully realized vision of a highly original concept. Now it’s up to audiences to determine whether it’s a classic."^[21] Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times described it as "an elaborately designed and very effective nostalgia piece for the movies of that time".^[22] David Ehrlich of IndieWire wrote "For a story that takes place in such a tactile and cohesive fantasy world, it’s frustrating that the archness of its telling keeps the viewer at a distance rather than pulling them closer to the heart of the matter. As a result, the stakes at play rarely feel worthy of the same imagination that makes them so clear, and the movie goes slack in a way it can never fully recover from when it slows down to explain itself during the second act."^[23] Bilge Ebiri of Vulture wrote "The Legend of Ochi looks amazingly, impressively real, but it’s populated by non-characters pursuing a nothing story."^[24]

Isaac Feldberg of Little White Lies wrote "Saxon’s film harkens back to Amblin classics like E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial and Gremlins, where coming-of-age fantasy collided with family drama, the emotive frisson between them fueled by a sense of danger and possibility and embodied by peculiar visitors from another place. The former’s defining image, a boy and his alien friend riding a bicycle into the midnight sky, enchanted an entire generation; certain sights and sounds here similarly fire the imagination, even if they’re shrouded in a story that more often functions in thrall to its influences than as anything near an original artifact."^[25] A. A. Dowd of Empire wrote "The first feature from music-video director Isaiah Saxon boasts wondrous old-school creature effects, but they’ve been applied to a rather derivative fable, an eccentric but skimpy Amblin wannabe."^[26]

• Official website
• The Legend of Ochi at IMDb