'The Legend of Ochi' supplies creature comforts, tactile fantasy and a touch too much effort

Getting swept distant by a phantasy satellite is 1 of moviegoing’s much rarefied pleasures, disbelief dissolving arsenic readily arsenic a pill connected the tongue. That makes achieving it a tricky endeavor. Count first-time diagnostic manager Isaiah Saxon among the much hardworking and dedicated magicians to effort it of precocious with his mist-laden cryptozoological fable “The Legend of Ochi,” a wade successful the waters of Miyazaki and Spielberg (that is, the Spielberg of “E.T.” and “Gremlins,” caput you).

A large woody of attraction — the handmade, integer and determination benignant — has gone into realizing this earnest, archly amusing communicative of a brooding teenage miss bonding with a threatened furry wood creature. Indeed, figuring retired wherever the rapturous, realistic Carpathian geography ends and the effects wizardry begins is thing of a thankless (and, to beryllium honest, buzzkilly) endeavor. At the aforesaid time, writer-director Saxon’s ain virtuosity, occasionally aggressive, yet leaves our hopes for existent emotions wanting, erstwhile we’ve go attuned to the dazzle.

High successful the mountains of their land community, Yuri (Helena Zengel) is the achromatic sheep successful her motherless family. A gentle psyche with a hardly disguised contempt for the hunting civilization fostered by her warrior-fetishizing dada Maxim (a reliably grizzled Willem Dafoe) and silently accepted by her sensitive-looking older member Petro (Finn Wolfhard), Yuri has been taught to fearfulness what lies beyond their unfastened farmland.

But the existent paranoia is saved for the mysterious, primate-like taxon called ochi, beasts that erstwhile again evade a nighttime hunt led by Yuri’s father, ludicrously armor-accessorized similar a cosplay centurion, starring a posse of rifle-wielding boys from the area. Her hilariously deadpan appraisal of it each implicit the household repast the pursuing nighttime is simply a grumble: “It’s stupid.”

Later, checking the carnivore traps, however, Yuri encounters a big-eared babe ochi cowering successful a hole, its hind limb bloodied. Squirreling the carnal location successful her backpack, she assuages its hissing-and-squawking panic with immoderate elemental nursing, past decides the close happening to bash is reunite her caller person with its family. That this sincere conception dovetails with an itch to vacate her dour, oppressive location lone adds to her determination. The quest takes further dimensions erstwhile the pair’s connection obstruction inexplicably collapses, followed by Yuri encountering her long-absent parent (a deliciously grimy and weathered Emily Watson), a solitary sheep-herder who’s an ochi expert, it turns out.

Like a batch of folk-fantasy movies grounded successful recognizable reality, “The Legend of Ochi” explains excessively overmuch astir its mythical critters — a occupation Watson is regrettably saddled with — erstwhile what’s called for is simply a defter storytelling touch. Especially since we cognize wherever this quirky human-versus-beast showdown is headed successful presumption of ecological lessons astir harmony betwixt taxon and melodramatic resolutions regarding the stubbornness of parents and children.

A postgraduate of euphony videos, Saxon — similar the Gondrys and Jonzes earlier him — excels astatine sheathing his yarn successful idiosyncratic humor, ambiance and technique. Burnished by Evan Prosofsky’s painterly cinematography, “The Legend of Ochi” is simply a beauteous lawsuit for the tactile spectacle of puppetry arsenic possibly the astir intimate enchantment tool.

And yet, by film’s end, we’re near with smiling admiration for its peculiarity and artistry alternatively of a catharsis, due to the fact that excessively overmuch of “The Legend of Ochi” feels similar a presentation. Good actors are crippled pieces much than characters, settings are backdrops much than environments and David Longstreth’s crescendo-packed orchestral people (like avant-garde John Williams successful its champion moments) excessively often feels insistent than convincing. It’s a jewel container of a film, for sure, with a bully connection inside, but losing yourself successful its satellite is wherever it falls short.