The Legend of Ochi Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

The Legend of Ochi Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 9, 2025

Note: I've been cautioning prospective consumers about the A24 shop, which has really been surprisingly ineffective in providing prompt shipments and especially in returning email inquiries (I have yet to receive a response about several formerly postponed shipments which just recently showed up months after having been ordered). This particular disc did get shipped promptly by the A24 shop.

Writer and director Isaiah Saxon is on hand in a rather interesting "making of" supplement included on this disc where he gets into some of the long gestation for this film, a gestation leading to an ultimate birth which was aided at least in part by Saxon's developing relationship with A24 courtesy of some longstanding friendships he had with various people involved with what still remains one of A24's most distinctive releases, Everything Everywhere All At Once (a film that perhaps saliently was distributed on Blu-ray and 4K UHD disc initially by Lionsgate before A24's shop offered their own exclusive edition). That said, The Legend of Ochi is decidedly not a clone (or multiverse variant) of The Daniels' Academy Award winning triumph, and instead might be jokingly described as, well, a multiverse variant of The Mandalorian. I mean, just look at the title creature featured prominently on the cover of this release and argue that he (it?) isn't a near, well, clone of Grogu in the Disney+ series. Even the broad underlying plot mechanics are somewhat like The Mandalorian, in that a human "protector" is helping to get the little creature back to where he (it?) belongs. In this case, it's not a battle hardened soldier, but instead a young farm girl named Yuri (Helena Zengel).

One of the things about Everything Everywhere All At Once that people either loved or hated was its near constant "WTF" state(s) of gonzo narrative and presentational elements that repeatedly kept audiences at least a bit off kilter. Here, the basic storyline is actually kind of rote in a number of ways, but the film is very strong on mood and style, though some may feel that things get a bit what the Brits might term "twee" in the process. The "legendary" outlines of an island called Carpathia plagued by feral monsters called Ochi are offered from the get go, with Yuri cautioned by her hunter father Maxim (Willem Dafoe) not to venture out alone after dark for fear of being attacked. Weirdly, then, Maxim allows Yuri to accompany "the boys" (as he calls an assembled "militia" of sorts) to hunt the beasts in the middle of the night. Yuri witnesses some horrifying effects of that hunt, which ultimately leads her to return to the location in secret to find a badly wounded baby Ochi caught in a trap.

Suffice it to say the bulk of the rest of the story is really simply about Yuri attempting to reunite the "tot" with its family, with Maxim, Yuri's older brother Petro (Finn Wolfhard) and that aforementioned militia in hot pursuit. Along the way, Yuri and the little creature of course bond, and Yuri ultimately reunites with her estranged mother Dasha (Emily Watson), a character who might jokingly be referred to as a quasi-Jane Goodall or Diane Fossey, having decided to live with, or at least near, the Ochi in order to study them. One of the most distinctive elements of this particular subplot is that the Ochi "communicate" in a kind of musical way through trilling ululations (though it is comically basically snippets of music played backward, a la an old Beatles record), and Dasha has become quite "fluent" in their language. That in turn allows Yuri to finally have at least a bit of a dialogue with the baby.

If the sound design finds one of its most distinctive elements in the above use of music as language, the film's actual visual production design is beautifully evocative in its own way. A lot of location work was then digitally altered and/or composited, but one place where CGI did not come into play was with regard to the little Ochi, which was a manually operated puppet, and while obviously different, the efforts of the puppeteers shown in the making of featurette may recall similar "manual" efforts utilized to bring another odd creature to life in an A24 outing, namely Marcel the Shell With Shoes On. I will say that occasional production design choices, as in the completely lunatic soldier getup Willem Dafoe is consigned to wear, may not particularly redound to the film's benefit.

The Legend of Ochi Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Legend of Ochi is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of A24 with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.67:1. As of the writing of this review, the IMDb specifies a 4K DI without offering any information on the camera, but there are several online sources, including interviews with Saxon and cinematographer Evan Prosofsky, where they mention the Arri Alexa as well as some vintage original Bausch and Lomb Baltar lenses from the 1930s. It's also interesting to note that Saxon, who aided in the film's massive amount of matte paintings, also overtly mentions in interviews how "after all the matte paintings and everything, we print film stock and rescan". The result is a really beautifully organic looking presentation that has obviously had its imagery if not any actual creature effects digitally altered (as is clearly shown in the making of featurette), but which has a much more naturally filmic look than typical digital capture with digital grain. The vintage lenses definitely give a somewhat softer look at times, but I found it incredibly evocative and completely supportive of the film's rather unique production design and overall "look". The palette is gorgeously suffused throughout. Fine detail on everything from costumes to the little Ochi's bristly fur is excellent.

The Legend of Ochi Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Legend of Ochi offers a really inviting, and at times rather subtle, Dolby Atmos track which takes full advantage of all of the surround channels to help establish the "otherworldliness" of Carpathia. Both ambient environmental sounds like wind or rain can combine with odd bird or animal calls, and the Ochi themselves can either roar or trill, as the case may be. What I might jokingly refer to as Dasha playing The Magic Flute also adds some really beautiful overhead activity, as do a couple of calls from cave bound Ochi. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. There are some forced subtitles for some "musical" dialogue between Yuri and her charge, but otherwise optional English and Spanish subtitles are available.

The Legend of Ochi Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Writer-Director Isaiah Saxon


• The Ochi Quest (HD; 18:22) is the making of supplement mentioned above, a rather interesting compendium of various random footage with Saxon on hand as a self described "tour guide".


• Deleted Scene: Emily Watson's "Singing Bird" (HD; 1:05)

This comes with A24's standard packaging of a slipbox enclosing a DigiPack, with art cards in the left pocket.

The Legend of Ochi Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Legend of Ochi is frequently charming, and it has a very evocative production and sound design for the most part. I just wish the story had been better developed, though in that regard, it's kind of funny to hear Saxon in his voiceover "tour guide" comments on the making of supplement more or less backhandedly "thank" A24 for requiring him to remove around 30 minutes of his original screenplay due to budgetary concerns. Technical merits are solid and the supplements enjoyable. Recommended.