1 of 5 | Helena Zengel stars in “The Legend of Ochi,” in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of A24
LOS ANGELES, April 14 (UPI) — The Legend of Ochi, in theaters Friday, combines aspects of family films of the ’80s with A24’s arthouse aesthetic. The unique combination proves charming.
The movie is set in an imagined modern-day Romania, where hunters still hunt Carpathian beasts. Maxim (Willem Dafoe) teaches his son Petro (Finn Wolfhard) and other boys to hunt Ochi, forest creatures that come out at night.
This hunter and prey relationship is upended when Maxim’s daughter Yuri (Helena Zengel) meets an injured Ochi and runs away with it.
The friendship between a child and a creature harkens back to the Steven Spielberg film E.T. and Gremlins, which he produced. The “kids on an adventure” genre also recalls The Goonies, NeverEnding Story and more.
The Legend of Ochi delivers on those counts. Yuri learns the Ochi’s language so they can communicate, and they escape a supermarket and river rapids in action scenes.
The Ochi is adorable and easily sympathetic when injured. Its tribe has some more menacing Ochi but they still retain the furry, wide-eyed charm.
In between those moments, however, the film more closely resembles other A24 movies like The Green Knight, as the focus turns to reveling in the Romanian land and myths.
Cinematography showcases the locations, showing the mountains and caves where the Ochi dwell.
Dialogue is sparse but when the actors speak, it has an endearingly childlike directness. Yuri tells her father he can have his traditional weapon back because she thinks it’s dumb. Her honesty is refreshing.
Dafoe also embraces the Carpathian mythology. He wears a helmet and armor for his hunts, and when encounters his ex-wife (Emily Watson), he makes grand speeches with a language reminiscent of medieval battle cries.
The broken family with divorced parents is also a hallmark of ’80s movies, especially the Spielberg ones. The dynamic remains just as relatable to kids in 2025, either literally as a child of divorce or a metaphor for feeling isolated from the adult world.
Writer/director Isaiah Saxon has crafted the ideal blend of familiar genre and new mythology. Though not quite as bombastic as similar movies from the past, it nevertheless satisfies emotionally and with rousing adventure.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
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