Two lifelong friends come to on a beach in a mystical realm, the previous night wiped from their memories, and one of them still has a plane to catch. That’s the premise of Forgotten Island — and if Huntrix has been on loop in your headphones all year, this is the closest thing to a methadone dose anyone has put on offer.
The DreamWorks Animation original is directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, the pair behind Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Demons, check. Music, check. A story built on friendship between two women, check. The resemblance to Netflix’s animated musical is hardly buried, and nobody attached to the project appears to be feigning otherwise.
Where the demand came from
Kpop Demon Hunters logged a full year inside Netflix’s global top 10 and racked up over 500 million views — the biggest title in the service’s history. On paper the concept reads like something a person pitched after losing a bet: a K-pop group whose songs quietly sustain a mystical barrier keeping demons out of our world.
Sony judged the film too “niche” to warrant a theatrical push. That call has aged badly. Netflix answered the viewership numbers with the widest theatrical release it has ever mounted, so fans could belt the songs out surrounded by strangers.
A sequel is in the works, but animation is a years-long business, so patience is required. Netflix is separately developing a global concert tour. Until any of that arrives, the wait gets shortened in three weeks.
The Philippines, the 1990s, one last night
Forgotten Island centers on Jo (H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano), two best friends facing down an expiration date. Raissa has been accepted to Caltech. Jo demands one final night worth remembering before she leaves.
The idea is to mess around on the beach. What turns up instead is a doorway into Nakali, the mystical realm out of the stories Jo’s grandmother used to tell her.
Nakali comes populated with demons and creatures lifted from Philippine mythology: the winged, vampiric Manananggal (Lea Salonga), the infant demon Bungi (Manny Jacinto) and the good-looking Kataw Mermahn (Kevin McCann). Then the film pulls a move that has no business working and probably will anyway — it becomes The Hangover. The two wake on the sand with the night blanked out, forced to piece together what went down and get back before Raissa’s flight to the U.S. leaves without her.
Nobody’s in a band, and there’s still a lot of music
Because Jo and Raissa aren’t pop stars, the soundtrack is free to get stranger. Several karaoke sequences. The two of them freestyle rapping side by side. The track list mixes original contemporary Filipino music with American standards from the ’80s and ’90s, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” and Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” among them.
The creature designs draw on the same anime lineage as Kpop Demon Hunters, with big, goofy facial expressions colliding into brightly colored magical brawls. If Jinu’s pets were the highlight of that film for you, Nakali is going to test your self-control.
Both movies are about the same thing
Huntrix leader Rumi spends her film in agony over concealing her demonic bloodline from her bandmates, and only comes into her power once they embrace who she really is. Jo’s dread is smaller and far more relatable: that Raissa leaves for America and stops thinking about her.
The adventure carries the argument. Either what the two of them built survives or it doesn’t, and the distance is what puts it to the test.
Forgotten Island arrives in theaters on Sept. 25.