Directors – Joel Crawford, Januel Mercado – 2026 – US – Cert. PG tbc – 98m
***
Two young, Filipino women, best friends since childhood, are transported back to the mythical land of the ancestors of one of them – plays in the Annecy International Animation Festival 2026 which runs from Sunday, 21st June to Saturday 27th June, and is out in cinemas worldwide on Friday, October 16th
The Philippines. (You’re supposed to know this is the location, but if the film explained it anywhere, apart from stating the setting is outside the US, I missed it.) New girl in class Jo (voice: H.E.R.) is doing a show and tell about the island of Natali, which her grandmother claims to have visited as a child, complete with terrifying descriptions of the Manananggal, the bat-winged demon which can split in two – lower half and upper half.
The teacher sends her to the principal for presenting falsehoods as real. Jo is soon joined by the more intellectual Raissa (voice: Lisa Soberano) who stands up for Jo after Jo has been sent out of the classroom. They bond outside the principal’s office, vowing to be best friends and to find the island of Natali together. Raissa is put off by Jo’s producing a knife to make them blood sisters, but it turns out she only wants to cut her a bracelet. They both wear one, the idea being to attach objects to each reminding them of shared memories.
What about the principal? The impetuous Jo leaves a post-it note bearing the legend BRB. (What this means isn’t explained for the next hour or so, which is annoying since Jo keeps leaving these notes for people. It eventually transpires this stands for Be Right Back.) They leave.
Life for Jo, as far as she can make it so, is one long wild, adventure / party. The more reserved Raissa is happy to go along with this. As the years go by, they get nowhere finding Natali. As Jo’s grandmother (voice: Dolly de Leon from Triangle of Sadness, Ruben Östlund, 2022) says, you don’t find Natali: it finds you.
The pair become inseparable. They never did find Natali. By the time they are young women, the happy-go-lucky Jo is cheerfully going through (and losing) a series of dead end jobs while Raissa’s conservative, ambitious parents are planning for her to go to higher education in the US. Invited to Raissa’s posh farewell do, Jo turns up late in a (work) chicken costume and in the ensuing mayhem accidentally burns the expensive spread to a crisp.
On Raissa’s last night, her disapproving parents ban her from hanging out with Jo, as she has a flight to catch in the morning. But Jo talks her into it. And, wouldn’t you know it, a portal turns up on the beach and the pair find themselves going down it into Natali.
The next day, they must have had a great time, because they can remember nothing. Raissa has acquired a pair of bat-wings, attached to her shoulders by claws which won’t let go, which apparently belonged to the Manananggal. They meet a boy named Raww (voice: Dave Franco from Love Lies Bleeding, Rose Glass, 2024; If Beale Street Could Talk, Barry Jenkins, 2018; The Lego Movie, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, 2014; Milk, Gus Van Sant, 2008) who has an unfortunate tendency to involuntarily shapeshift into an aspin (a Filipino dog species) and back who claims to have bonded with them, and offers to be their guide, but his condition makes him unreliable as such.
Instead, the three enlist a giant baby (voice: Manny Jacinto from Top Gun: Maverick, Joseph Kosinski, 2022) who cuts the literal umbilical cord to his stallholder mother to take up the job. They also encounter a friendly, elderly woman (voice: Jenny Slate from The Lego Batman Movie, Phil Lord, Chris Mckay, 2017; Despicable Me 3, Pierre Coffin, Kyle Balda, 2017, The Secret Life of Pets, Chris Renaud, 2016) who lives inside a huge tree trunk residence and wants to swap things for the girls’ memories, and eventually (and the film wouldn’t be doing it’s job if they didn’t) the fearsome Manananggal (voice: Lea Salonga from K Pop Demon Hunters, Maggie King, Chris Appelhans, 2025; Mulan, Barry Cook, Tony Bancroft, 1998; Aladdin, John Musker, Ron Clements, 1992).
Failure to explain certain essential details to the audience notwithstanding, there is much to admire here, not least the putting of not only a long-running female friendship but also folkloric Filipino mythology on the screen. Some of the more intimate scenes of friendship (and that’s not code for saying they are sexual, these are just friendships, albeit deep ones) are genuinely touching, but these are undercut by rapidly-paced and fast edited action scenes underscored by raucous music which I found to be not to my taste, and, indeed, offputting.
Plus, there are elements in the narrative closure wherein, without giving anything away, certain characters (I.e. bad ones, villains if you will), suddenly realise that what they do is wrong and without any apparent struggle modify their behaviour to something less villainous, which is a major dramatic fail and deeply dissatisfying. It feels as if the film (the producers) have jettisoned artistic iand dramatic ntegrity in favour of political correctness box ticking.
Judging by the standing ovation the film received at its Annecy 2026 premiere, where perhaps 95% of the audience responded with rapturous applause, my doubts about the film may be a minority reaction, but I could see out of the corner of my eye a few people sneaking out during the applause as if they could scarcely believe that such a so-so film was getting such a positive response. So I imagine the reviews will be mostly extremely favourable while a few, such as this one, may take a rather more dissenting line.
Forgotten Island plays in the Annecy International Animation Festival 2026 which runs from Sunday, 21st June to Saturday 27th June, and is and out in cinemas worldwide on Friday, October 16th.
Trailer: