The Legend of Ochi
A24 | Release Date: April 18, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
67
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 28 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
9
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
90
VarietyCarlos AguilarJan 27, 2025
“Ochi” oozes wonder shot after shot, in part from the eye-popping environments produced through a combination of Evan Prosofsky’s lambent cinematography and the use of matte paintings. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 25, 2025
The movie is tightly packed with incident, maybe overpacked, but Saxon’s fairy tale is an intense, lived-in experience, its centuries-old folkloric atmosphere dotted with all the usual intrusive elements of progress. Read full review
88
Washington PostTy BurrApr 24, 2025
If you’re up for a film that tells its own tale, rather than the one it thinks you want to hear, this one has a touch of madness to it, and it seems fashioned from love and old parts for people who genuinely don’t want to know what’s going to happen next. Read full review
80
Screen RantMary KasselApr 25, 2025
The Legend of Ochi isn't just a throwback in terms of style and narrative. It recalls a time when audiences had longer attention spans and were more willing to suspend their disbelief, and there's no better reason to do so than to experience The Legend of Ochi. Read full review
80
The Daily BeastNick SchagerApr 18, 2025
If the spell it casts is somewhat familiar, it’s nonetheless enlivened by surefooted atmosphere, excellent puppetry, and charismatically outsized performances from Emily Watson and Willem Dafoe. Read full review
80
ColliderAnna MillerJan 29, 2025
What the film lacks in these specific story aspects it makes up for with its enchanting style and captivating tale. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterJustin LoweJan 27, 2025
A fantastical tale brimming with adventure and originality. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerApr 24, 2025
The Legend of Ochi is a kids’ movie in all the best possible ways, all the most enriching, magical ways that a kids’ movie should be. It’s also educational, but not in a teaching, preachy fashion. Instead, it’s filled with wisdom and heart, a fabulous tale of the fantastical that will leave your children filled with a sense of wonder about the world. Read full review
75
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenApr 23, 2025
While the baby Ochi is something of a Grogu-Gizmo hybrid, the use of puppetry and animatronics gives it an idiosyncratic scruffiness. It feels as if you’re encountering a new species, not watching a digitized fantasy film. Read full review
75
The Associated PressLindsey BahrApr 23, 2025
The Legend of Ochi, a scrappy and darkly whimsical fable about a misunderstood teenage girl on a dangerous quest, has the feeling of a film you might have stumbled on and loved as a kid. Something tactile, something fantastical and, maybe, something a little dangerous — the kind of movie you knew you probably weren’t supposed to be seeing just yet. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoJan 27, 2025
Parts of it aren’t perfect, but that’s also kind of its charm in that it feels like a family film made by flesh-and-blood people in an era when computers are doing so much of the work. Even when “The Legend of Ochi” stumbles, it does so in a way that’s almost sweet. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineMarshall ShafferJan 27, 2025
A simplicity of spirit guides writer-director Isaiah Saxon’s fable-like feature debut. Read full review
70
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzApr 23, 2025
It genuinely wants to say something important and poignant about what we lose when we stop believing in the unreal, but it cannot quite make the leap into figuring out why anybody should be inclined to listen to such heartfelt pleas. Read full review
70
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonApr 17, 2025
The Legend of Ochi is light on story — you kind of know what’s going to happen all the time — and that, coupled with occasionally garbled dialogue, makes it easy to zone out at times. But in its place it serves up a nourishing banquet for the senses. Read full review
70
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaJan 30, 2025
Isaiah Saxon’s adventure fairytale ends up unique and beautiful, much like the adorable animatronic foundling of its title. Read full review
70
Screen DailyTim GriersonJan 27, 2025
Music-video director Isaiah Saxon’s feature debut sometimes wobbles when balancing its impish sense of humour with darker tone, but ultimately, the picture’s peculiarity becomes part of its charm — as difficult to resist as that adorable titular critter. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubIgnatiy VishnevetskyApr 25, 2025
Yet for all of its imaginative inspirations, The Legend Of Ochi feels under-conceptualized: It’s a fairytale without much stirring under the studiously designed surface. Read full review
67
Paste MagazineAndrew CrumpApr 23, 2025
Pulling focus from what is essential to The Legend of Ochi, from acting to artifice, throws the experience into haze–and not the fantasy kind, either, but the distended, stumbling kind that lets the pace go limp as the themes go slack. It’s to Saxon’s great credit as a visionary that The Legend of Ochi justifies the experience anyway, on the strength of its rare craftsmanship alone. Read full review
60
EmpireA.A. DowdAug 1, 2025
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. Read full review
60
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyJul 31, 2025
So much time in The Legend of Ochi is spent traversing these beautiful landscapes looking for something to grab onto – a thought or an emotion – but there’s nothing really here other than the simple conflict between nature and the men quick to whip out their shotguns when faced with the unknown. Read full review
60
Little White LiesIsaac Feldberg Apr 23, 2025
The film is a triumph of special effects, certainly, but its narrative ambitions are more modest and predictable. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleApr 18, 2025
Writer-director Saxon’s own virtuosity, occasionally aggressive, eventually leaves our hopes for real emotions wanting, once we’ve become attuned to the dazzle. Read full review
60
The GuardianJesse HassengerApr 17, 2025
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. Read full review
58
IndieWireDavid EhrlichJan 27, 2025
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. Read full review
50
TheWrapChase HutchinsonApr 16, 2025
It’s just that while you can’t see any of the strings being used on the effects, you can see the story being manipulated. You may fall in love with Ochi all the same, but you can only wish you’d gone on a richer journey together. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriJan 27, 2025
For all the visual vividness, we have very little actual sense of this land, or the people who live there. Yes, The Legend of Ochi looks amazingly, impressively real, but it’s populated by non-characters pursuing a nothing story. Read full review
50
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodJan 27, 2025
Along with some truly breathtaking visuals, the pint-size Ochi is the best part of Saxon’s long-in-the-works opus. Read full review
38
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonApr 23, 2025
The Legend of Ochi is being pitched as a family movie by A24, but I don’t believe most kids would enjoy this slow-moving slog set in the Carpathian mountains. Read full review
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