The Legend of Ochi

• USA.
• Direction: Isaiah Saxon.
• Production: Richard Peete, Traci Carlson, Isaiah Saxon, Jonathan Wang / AGBO Films, Encyclopedia Pictura, Neighborhood Watch, Year of the Rat.
• Screenplay: Isaiah Saxon.
• Photography: Evan Prosofsky.
• Music: David Longstreth.
• Edition: Paul Rogers.
• Cast: Helena Zengel, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson, Finn Wolfhard.

Yes, it does look like other films where a solitary girl (it could also be a boy) meets a fantastic creature, a wild, abandoned or lost puppy, takes it home, but then decides to return it to its natural habitat and its own kind. Yes, it could be Lilo & Stitch (2025) or E. T. (1982). Or perhaps not. To begin with, we are not in Hawaii or Los Angeles, but in Transylvania, a place name that has many of us tingling with dark pleasure. To begin with 2, Ochi is not a wolf cub, but one of the region's endemic monsters (they can't all be vampires…). To begin with 3, Willem Dafoe puts in a performance, in true Kinski/Wrath of God style, as an ochi-hunter. To begin with 4, the beloved studio behind Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), A24, is the producer of this fiction debut by Isaiah Saxon.