Forgotten Island will be released in theaters on September 25.
Having already made a standout film for DreamWorks Animation with 2022’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, directors Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado have reteamed for the wonderful Forgotten Island, which manages to tell a story that’s both deeply personal and impressively fantastical in equal measure.
Also written by Crawford and Mercado, Forgotten Island centers on recent high school graduates Jo and Raissa (voiced, respectively, by the winning pairing of singer-songwriter H.E.R. and Liza Soberano), whose longtime friendship is about to be tested in a big way, as Raissa prepares to move from the Philippines to America in order to attend Caltech. The night before Raissa is to leave, the two find themselves transported to Nakali, a mystical world filled with creatures from Filipino folklore just like Jo’s late grandmother, Lola Fatima (Dolly de Leon), had told them about. Now they must find their way back home while also trying to figure out what exactly happened in a 12-hour gap in their memories that’s obscuring what exactly occurred after they first arrived in this strange land.
Forgotten Island is skillfully told and easy to connect with from the start, well before any fantasy elements are introduced. Vaguely set in the late ’80s-early ’90s (based on the technology and music), the film quickly cements Jo and Raissa as an especially lovable comedic duo, starting with showing how they came to be best friends as kids. While Jo is the more overt wild child and Raissa the scientifically adept nerdy one, the two bond over a mutual love of the weird and the macabre — and sometimes, a love for putting themselves in dangerous scenarios — in a very funny series of scenes that shows their adoration of all things strange and offbeat. This includes stories involving the creatures Lola Fatima tells them about, which they eagerly recreate onstage for their classmates, “splash zone” included thanks to the copious amounts of fake blood with which they splatter the crowd.
Though the movie is certainly accessible for younger kids, filled with clever gags that can be appreciated regardless of age, Crawford and Mercado are aware that some kids share a love for fun and freaky stuff from an early age, infusing Jo and Raissa with a huge sense of relatable joy for those who share their specific tastes. Beyond that, and most importantly, it’s easy to believe in and connect to their deep bond and the sense of finding your kindred spirit as a kid, regardless of what your specific shared interests are.
As for the Forgotten Island of the title, Nakali is filled with a bevy of fantastic creatures of all shapes and sizes, starting with Raww (an exuberant Dave Franco), a weredog who guides our heroes on their journey, having spent those missing 12 hours partying with them. Then you have the baby-like Bungi (Manny Jacinto); the memory-collecting Batiba (Jenny Slate); the aquatic Mermahn (Kevin McCann); and the diminutive King Truffle Wuffle (Ronny Chieng), whose angry, combative nature is undercut by an innate physical adorableness he despises. All of these characters play notable roles along the way, while Jo and Raissa also come into conflict with the Manang (Lea Salonga), a ferocious, fanged, clawed creature called a Manananggal, whose abilities include bisecting herself at the waist into two halves when needed.
As you might glean by that description above, Manang is a genuinely unsettling presence, vividly depicted by the film’s excellent animation. As proven by the character Death in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Crawford and Mercado are willing to go further than your typical family animated movie when it comes to making their villains truly feel ominous and menacing, and Manang definitely reinforces this in a highly effective manner. Part of Raissa and Jo’s memory gap has Raissa waking up with Manang’s wings somehow now on her back and attached by two demonic-looking hands that hold onto her shoulders, which is one of many cool and creepy touches in the film before we even see Manang herself hunting her prey.
Forgotten Island juggles its many elements incredibly well, with moments that evoke the likes of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World in terms of the film’s style and energy, intermixed with a ton of legitimately funny comedy bits coexisting alongside its awesome looking and fascinating creatures. Its depiction of Filipino culture, both via Jo and Raissa’s everyday life and through the folklore explored, is also wonderfully interwoven into the film’s fabric, providing a vivid, welcoming window whether you’re familiar with any of it beforehand or not.
But at the heart of the film is Jo and Raissa’s friendship, and yeah, you could snark about how this is another movie about “the power of friendship,” which it absolutely is, but it’s a great movie about the power of friendship. It’s also a great movie about the power of the history of friendship and the significance of the shared memories we make with the people we love.
Raissa and Jo’s missing 12 hours are a strong comedy engine, making this sort of a family friendly version of The Hangover as they awaken to many signs — from odd new clothing they’re wearing to Raissa’s half-shaved head (and her new wings!) to the crude new matching tattoos Jo and Raww have — that some truly wild shenanigans went down the night before. But they’re also setting up integral aspects of the film as it continues, and our two heroes have to make some big decisions about just how important memories can be in relation to who we are today.
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