There’s something rare about stumbling into a film that feels like it was made not just with care, but with hands—hands that built forests from felt, stitched fur onto creatures, and pressed meaning into silence. The Legend of Ochi, the debut feature by Isaiah Saxon, is that kind of film. And it’s exactly the kind of story that speaks to those of us who believe magic is still best conveyed through craft, not pixels.
Set in the fictional land of Carpathia, the film follows a quiet girl named Yuri (played with soft strength by Helena Zengel) who discovers a wounded baby ochi—one of the elusive creatures her community fears. What unfolds is a journey both literal and emotional: a trek across strange, sublime landscapes in search of connection, family, and truth buried deeper than myth.
But what sets Ochi apart isn’t its plot—familiar in beats, like the bones of a fable—but the way it’s told. Saxon, co-founder of the art collective Encyclopedia Pictura, brings a singular visual imagination to life. Every frame feels painterly, rooted in tactile beauty. The ochi itself isn’t CGI, but an animatronic puppet operated by seven performers. That decision alone elevates the film—its weight, its presence, its believability. You feel it breathe. You believe it blinks.
The film’s visual allure owes much to the work of cinematographer Evan Prosofsky. The production employed a large-format ARRI ALEXA digital camera paired with 1930s Baltar lenses—the first lenses ever manufactured in the U.S. The result is a dreamy, softened look that evokes early cinema while retaining the precision of modern filmmaking.
Director Isaiah Saxon explains:
“We shot on large format ALEXA, our acquisition medium, but with 1930s glass, the original Baltars, which were the first U.S.-produced lenses. And then, at the very end, we print to film, after all the matte paintings and everything, we print film stock and rescan it. And that’s the look of the movie.”
— Isaiah Saxon (source)
This analog-digital hybrid workflow gives Ochi its unique texture. More than 200 hand-painted matte paintings were used to enhance backgrounds, blurring the line between realism and storybook surrealism. It’s a feast for the eyes, and a love letter to cinema’s tactile past.
The score, composed by David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors, wraps the world in strings, flutes, and wordless longing. There’s a track that played during Yuri’s descent into the ochi forest that I haven’t stopped thinking about. It reminded me of the first time I watched The Dark Crystal as a kid—half terrified, half entranced, and fully lost in a place I didn’t want to leave.
Willem Dafoe, Finn Wolfhard, and Emily Watson round out the cast, but wisely, the film keeps its focus narrow. This isn’t about world-saving; it’s about world-understanding. A slower, stranger kind of quest.
Is it a perfect film? No. Its pacing may frustrate viewers raised on franchise polish, and its lore is deliberately opaque. But The Legend of Ochi doesn’t beg for your attention—it earns it, slowly. It invites you in like an old forest path, and asks you to look closer. To listen. To remember.
If you’re someone who loves handcrafted work, storytelling that honors ambiguity, and films that whisper instead of shout, I can’t recommend this enough. It’s not just a movie—it’s a stitched-together dream.
The Legend of Ochi is currently streaming on most major platforms. But if you can catch it on a big screen—or better yet, with a child who still believes in hidden worlds—do it. You won’t regret walking into the woods.