THE LEGEND OF OCHI (2025)
Tagline: Something else is out there.
(Fantasy, Survival, Dysfunctional Family) [PG]
I'm not going to hurt you.
Oh, there is something else out there alright. In this story, we’re dropped into a remote village on the island of Carpathia. A crazy dude named Maxim has a group of kids hunting for the elusive ochi. One of them, a girl named Yuri, pretty much hates her life. While checking traps, she finds an injured baby ochi and decides to get it back home on her own, navigating a perilous landscape full of challenges.
First off, if you are watching this movie because you saw Finn Wolfhard in the trailer, then you are going to be massively disappointed. He's only on screen for maybe 7 minutes of the entire movie and only has about 4 or 5 lines. He plays a character named Petro and probably contains the least amount of "jerk" in this entire thing. There is a poster for this movie that actually has the entire cast of 11 actors and actresses on it. That isn't terrible for an indie film, I just found it interesting. The other big name in the cast is Willem Dafoe. He is really good at playing crazy characters, and he nails that here.
This film is being marketed as a family film, but it's anything but that unless your kids are just too dumb to spot weird crap in a movie when they see it. If that is the case, God help them, because they probably won't spot it in real life either. I thought A24 crushed it with DEATH OF A UNICORN for the most part, but this flick is a return to their roots in "let's watch people do really weird crap" form.
Tonally, this thing starts off at a pretty good clip and actually has some funny moments, but then it drags on and on for the last 50 minutes or so as we start to realize that pretty much everyone but Yuri and Petro suck. So what doesn't suck about this thing?
Well, we do get some really good filming, a pretty decent soundtrack, and some excellent special effects. We also see some absolutely breathtaking wilderness, but that is more just location choice. So let's be clear, this feature isn't without at least some merits.
What wasn't awesome is that the crew had to play loud music and put up disco lights to keep one of the houses in the film from getting raided by bears every night. What was also a huge miss for me was that the score was trying to elicit some sort of emotion in the latter part of the film, but all I could think was, did that dude do something creepy to every chick in this village and those kids or what the actual crap is going on? Laced with nauseating sequences and a pretty terrible backstory, this thing really doesn't have much to offer other than what I just mentioned earlier. Having said that, if you want the good things I mentioned about this thing, just take a drive to the forest and crank some Skillet or Narnia in your headphones or something.
I really wanted to like this because the previews gave me a sort of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON feel, but I walked out of this kind of wanting to watch a different, better movie, just to forget about this flick. I feel bad for the young cast only in the sense that no one seemed to be having any fun. Helena Zengel did fine acting-wise, but played a pretty unlikable character.
This is a clear front runner for WORST 10 MOVIES OF 2025, which isn't what I was hoping for when I sat down in the theater with my Barq's Red Creme Soda. This one gets a 2 out of 7.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF A24 AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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