Two best friends wake up on a beach in a mystical realm with no memory of the night before, and one of them has a flight to catch. That’s the setup for Forgotten Island, and if you spent the last year with Huntrix on repeat, it’s the closest thing to a methadone dose that anyone has offered you.
The DreamWorks Animation original comes from Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, who co-directed Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. It has demons. It has music. It has a story about female friendship. The overlap with Netflix's animated musical isn’t subtle, and nobody involved seems to be pretending otherwise.
Where the demand came from
Kpop Demon Hunters spent a full year in Netflix’s global top 10 and pulled more than 500 million views, making it the most-watched title in the service’s history. The premise sounds like a pitch someone lost a bet on: a K-pop band whose music secretly powers a mystical barrier holding demons back from the world.
Sony thought the movie was too “niche” for theaters. That read didn’t age well. Netflix responded to the numbers by mounting its widest theatrical run ever so fans could sing along in a room full of strangers.
A sequel is in the works, but animation takes years, so don’t hold your breath. Netflix is also working on launching a global concert tour. In the meantime, the gap gets filled in three weeks.
The Philippines, the 1990s, one last night
Forgotten Island follows Jo (H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano), best friends staring down an ending. Raissa gets into Caltech. Jo insists on one last memorable night before she goes.
The plan is to goof off on the beach. What they find instead is a portal to Nakali, the mystical realm from the stories Jo’s grandmother used to tell.
Nakali is stocked with demons and creatures from Philippine mythology: the flying, vampire-like Manananggal (Lea Salonga), the baby demon Bungi (Manny Jacinto) and the handsome Kataw Mermahn (Kevin McCann). Then the movie does something that shouldn’t work and probably will. It turns into The Hangover. The pair wake up on the sand with the night erased, and they have to reconstruct what happened and get home before Raissa misses her flight to the U.S.
Nobody’s in a band, and there’s still a lot of music
Jo and Raissa aren’t pop stars, which frees the soundtrack up to be weirder. Multiple karaoke scenes. The two of them freestyle rapping together. The song list runs original contemporary Filipino music alongside ’80s and ’90s American standards, including Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” and Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.”
The creature design pulls from the same anime influences as Kpop Demon Hunters, with exaggerated, silly facial expressions crashing into colorful magical battles. If Jinu’s pets were your favorite part of that movie, Nakali is going to be a problem for your self-control.
Both movies are about the same thing
Rumi, the leader of Huntrix, spends her movie tormented by hiding her demonic heritage from her bandmates and finds her strength only once they accept who she actually is. Jo’s fear is quieter and more familiar: that Raissa goes to America and forgets her.
The adventure is the argument. What they’ve built together holds, or it doesn’t, and distance is the test.
Forgotten Island releases in theaters on Sept. 25.
