Forgotten Island sends two lifelong friends through a portal that costs them the very thing they came to protect. Jo and Raissa are celebrating their last night together before graduation when the beach opens into Nakali, a hidden island that starts erasing their memories of each other the longer they stay. Getting home means racing to leave before there is nothing left to remember.
The film grew out of a real friendship rather than a studio pitch. Codirectors Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado built Nakali around their own connection to the Philippines: Mercado is Filipino American and Crawford's wife is Filipina, and the pair traveled there together while developing the story, meeting extended family and gathering the folklore that ended up on screen.
That research shows up in the island itself. Nakali is populated with figures pulled from Philippine mythology, including the blood drinking manananggal, the child like tiyanak, and the legendary bird Ibong Adarna, alongside Raww, a weredog voiced by Dave Franco who becomes Jo and Raissa's guide through the island.
Visually, Forgotten Island pushes further into the hand drawn, anime inflected look Crawford helped bring to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. Wide angle framing and painterly lighting turn small character beats into something closer to widescreen spectacle, a style choice that suits an island built from shifting memory. H.E.R. makes her voice acting debut as Jo, opposite Liza Soberano as Raissa, with Lea Salonga and Jenny Slate among the voices filling out Nakali's stranger corners. It is also a milestone release for the studio, landing as DreamWorks Animation's fiftieth animated feature.
Nakali's trippier stretches are the film's real pitch, the kind of full color, rule bending animation that recalls Fantasia more than a typical family adventure. A studio built on ogres and dragons handing its landmark fiftieth feature to a story rooted in Filipino myth is worth paying attention to on its own. Forgotten Island is betting that a friendship can carry a fantasy world, not the other way around.
