“Movie magic” is a broad phrase that generally encapsulates all of the incredible illusions that audiences witness on the big screen – but there is an argument to be made that the best examples possess magic behind the scenes as well. The titular creatures in the new 2025 film The Legend Of Ochi are a perfect example of this. I was blown away watching the blue and orange simians come to life during my screening (with an additional wow factor in hearing them communicate), but stars Finn Wolfhard and Helena Zengel were amazed by them even after writer/director Isaiah Saxon called “cut” and the puppeteers paused their work.
The Legend Of Ochi stars Zengel as Yuri, a young girl who finds a baby Ochi and makes it her mission to return it to its family, and Wolfhard plays Petro, her adopted brother who joins their father (Willem Dafoe) in trying to find Yuri and kill the fantastical creature. When I spoke with the actors earlier this month during the movie’s virtual press day, they discussed their experience with the practical creation on set. I asked the duo if the magic was maintained between scenes, and Wolfhard explained how he consistently saw a live animal:
You have a team of people, of puppeteers, who are piloting this puppet, and they're the actors in a lot of ways. They're trying to convey a performance from this creature, and it really does feel alive. And then yeah, when they say, ‘Cut,’ you usually take a break for a second, but it does look so real. I mean, it's not as obvious, it's not emoting as much because they're not working on the performance, but I mean, if you put the Ochi, just like lifeless [puppet] in a forest somewhere, someone would find it and think that it was a real, dead, extinct thing.
It is all too common in modern Hollywood for creature design to be left to visual effects artists, but Isaiah Saxon understood that a tactile aspect to the Ochi was vital to the story he wanted to tell, and it’s something that very much comes across on the big screen. Deep in the logic center of your brain, you understand that it’s a creation of advanced animatronics and textured materials, but the emotional part of your brain registers it as a real, breathing creature, and its amazingness does its own job adding stakes to the story.
Helena Zengel echoed her co-stars sentiments about the creature design in The Legend Of Ochi, going as far as to say that the Ochi looked so real that it was scary:
I feel the puppeteers really made it come alive, you know, and made it look alive. But the Ochi itself, you know, the eyes would blink with like a remote control. The eyes would blink, the mouth would move. It looked so real. It was actually terrifying. I thought it was a real animal that was just, you know, extinct or something. They did a great job. Their job was almost more important than any other job that we did, because without them, the Ochi would've never come alive.
The Legend Of Ochi had its world premiere earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, and it was picked up for distribution by A24. Also starring the talented Emily Watson, the movie is now in theaters – cracking the domestic box office Top 10 while playing in fewer than 1,200 locations.
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