Nostalgia for the Nineties has, by now, overtaken pop-cultural nostalgia for the Eighties. You can see it in the cut of everyone’s jeans and a renewed enthusiasm for Mazzy Star as much as you can the visual style of broadcast animé like Ghost in the Shell or Goodbye, Lara. Forgotten Island, the new film from Puss in Boots: The Last Wish directors Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, is built from the same fondness for that bygone decade, here localised to the Philippines and inspired by Mercado’s family and creatures from Filipino myth. It feels apt, then, that Jo (HER) and Raissa (Liza Soberano) themselves make the choice to go to the eponymous island rather than being spirited away to it, on some level a reflection on the part of the filmmakers of their own choice to delve into the pop culture and aesthetic signifiers of their past.

Assembled from a collage of period-appropriate interests as well as more contemporary tastes in animation (like graphic brushstrokes), Crawford and Mercado’s 3D, often neon-hued and stylised craft lifts from the visual language and shorthand of animé and manga, as well as the ultra-wide-angle lensing often associated with the digital cameras of the time. Once on the island, the virtual camerawork, through the telltale quake of handheld, emphasises the camera as a real object – like teens shooting ad hoc skateboard videos. Perhaps the most exciting thing about the film is seeing just how far Crawford and Mercado push this patchwork sensibility, incorporating 2D animation into moving tapestries and using cutout-styled sequences. 

Forgotten Island​’s deliberate ​“blemishes” extend to its use of mixed media, such as a live-action clip of Predator playing on television. The crude collage of mediums, made without regard for immersion, in its own way feels like a callback to the style of anarchic Nineties cartoons. Perhaps Crawford and Mercado are conscious of that instinct to retreat into childhood, and not just in the nostalgic aesthetics. The first instinct of Jo is to go to what’s safe, and that childish instinct becomes a weight around Raissa’s ankle (whose potential is symbolised by wings Raissa pinched from a demon overnight).

Crawford and Mercado bat around a lot of visual ideas, most of which would be satisfying to watch if not for the impatient and overwhelming editing and loud, rapid
patter. The gags themselves will, ultimately, come down to personal preference. For me, the various malapropisms (“Lucky for you, I have a photogenic memory”) of a self-centred Kataw (a sort of merman) land best. But overall the unique qualities of the film are often drowned out by the noise, which seems increasingly customary for children’s films. A density of jokes is fine, but the hyperactivity can be frustrating and stifling, leaving little time or room for wonder, or for the genuine poignancy of its third act or any reminiscence of missing loved ones to truly sink in. Without that, Forgotten Island threatens to be forgettable.