How The Legend Of Ochi Became A “Brutal” Labor Of Love
The cast and crew of A24’s new fantasy break down the film’s grounding force.
It’s ironic that something like The Legend of Ochi — a cinematic odyssey handcrafted with traditional methods — is accused of being made with AI. The upcoming film from director Isaiah Saxon feels almost like a live-action Miyazaki film, boasting the kind of visuals that many have cut corners to achieve. In reality, though, Saxon spent eight years creating his feature debut. His dedication to the craft is delightfully old-school, and his years-long process impressed both his cast and crew.
“Isaiah’s a real world builder,” Finn Wolfhard, one of the stars of Ochi, tells Inverse. “He just knows how to build a world and he really has a vision. He’s a visionary and a real artist — so just to be around that, around him, and also be around for his first experience making a movie, was really special.”
Saxon’s creative team believed in his vision, but achieving it was a battle unto itself. The filmmaker describes production as a “brutal slog,” but in hindsight, all that effort was well worth it.
It took years for Saxon to achieve the perfect design for the Ochi.
Ochi follows the adventures of Yuri (Helena Zengel), a teenage girl living on a remote island with her surly father Maxim (Willem Dafoe) and adopted brother Petro (Wolfhard). Maxim leads the community on frequent hunts against the Ochi, the ape-like creatures who dwell in the wild. When Yuri encounters a Baby Ochi after a skirmish in the woods, she commits to returning it to its family deep in the mountains. Baby Ochi is the star of the film in a lot of ways, thanks in part to some immaculate creature effects from John Nolan Studios.
“They are the best animatronic creature-builders in the world,” Saxon tells Inverse. “They had just done Jurassic World and were kind enough to work on this small budget.”
It took years to develop the prototype for a functional Ochi puppet, with five people operating the body and two operating the face through remote control. For the adult Ochi, “we put small people in ape suits with heavy animatronic heads that were also remote-controlled.”
“You’d think it would be difficult to perform with a puppet,” Dafoe muses. “[But] those six, seven people that are operating the puppet, all their energy is going into it, so the puppet has a kind of presence. And you’ve got the energy of all those people that you’re playing the scene with, so it’s much more engaging than you might think.”
Seven puppeteers operated the Ochi, creating even more immersion for the cast.
Ochi filmed on location in Romania, and Saxon’s attention to detail served as a rallying point for many of the cast and crew. Save for a few CG-assisted stunts for the Ochi, he shot everything practically, lending an immersive quality to Saxon’s production.
“Working with Isaiah was so beautiful because he has such a love for details,” adds Zengel. “He would literally paint the backgrounds, paint the sky, the Ochi, whatever.”
That said, it was not an easy production. “The shoot was pretty down and dirty,” Dafoe admits. “We had a good crew, but we were shooting in [rough] weather and shooting in sometimes very natural places.”
“It was just putting ourselves into the hardest possible situation with animatronics and puppetry and child actors and cold mountain conditions in Romania,” Saxon says. “And then seeing if we can claw our way out.”
The cast’s chemistry grounded Saxon’s fantastical setting: “I feel like it really shows up on screen, this connection that we do have.”
Fortunately, Saxon’s script kept the story focused on Yuri’s dysfunctional family. Her journey to find the Ochi creates a major rift between Maxim and Petro, who’ve dedicated their lives to hunting the creatures. Then there’s Yuri’s estranged mother Dasha (Emily Watson), who left her family behind to study the Ochi in the mountains.
“She’s a real complicated mix,” Watson tells Inverse. “She’s studied these creatures. She has them in her heart. She knows them so well.” Yet she “fully buys into the fear and the hostility” that separates the humans from the Ochi. Like Maxim, she frowns upon Yuri’s burgeoning bond with Baby Ochi, creating complex layers between every member of this family. “That’s one of the things I really loved about the script, with these people with very, very dysfunctional relationships.”
Ochi is a mood piece in the vein of the family-friendly Amblin films of old, but it’s about more than its lush aesthetics. “I feel like it really shows up on screen, this connection that we do have,” Zengel says of the cast.
That’s what grounds this ethereal film when it needs it the most, turning a frothy fantasy into a labor of love — in more ways than one.
