The Legend of Ochi director Isaiah Saxon goes to great lengths to reveal how puppetry, animatronics, CGI and other traditional tools were used to create his mythical ochi creatures for his upcoming A24 film.
“As we were shooting, you could see all five puppeteers standing around in plain clothes. If you looked at the puppet, you’d say ‘that’s a real living thing,’” Saxon says at one point in the short featurette for the film, which hits theaters April 25 after bowing at Sundance.
The look at the film follows October’s first trailer for Legend of Ochi, which was greeted by a slew of online claims that generative AI was used to create the mysterious ochi monsters. He denied this at the time.
The first-look teaser showed interactions between the shy daughter Yuri (Helena Zengel) and a wounded orphan ochi she discovered. Defying her father, Maxim (Willem Dafoe), she goes on a quest to return her lovable Gremlin-like creature home.
Saxon adds he purposely dialed up the family film’s magical look as Maxim and his family pursue Yuri and her forest-dwelling ochi, a lovable primate-like creature with reddish fur, blue facial features and a distinctive musical call.
In The Legend of Ochi, Yuri seemingly has to choose between her baby ochi and her family, which includes her adopted older brother (Finn Wolfhard) and a mother (Emily Watson).
Saxon is known for work shooting music videos for Bjork and Grizzly Bear. His debut feature is set in 1982 and makes use of Romania’s Carpathian Mountains, where the The Legend of Ochi was mostly shot.
“Growing up, I felt the deepest mysteries were found in nature and I hope to share that same feeling, that anything is possible,” the director says in the first-look short.