DreamWorks Animation is Making a Claim for Movie (Animated or Otherwise) of the Year – ‘Forgotten Island’ Review

My mother, my primary connection to my Filipino heritage, passed away in 2011. As a good Catholic woman, she didn’t really talk about the folklore of the islands except once during the aforementioned village. She talked about her greatest fear being the manananggal, a fearsome vampire like creature. There have been a couple instances of manananggal’s in media, but I did not understand the horror it could induce until Forgotten Island, which mind you is predominantly a movie geared towards a slightly younger audience than my 35-year-old self. That said, I think that’s why I adore this movie so much.

When Forgotten Island was originally announced, I noted that it seemingly felt engineered in a laboratory to speak to my specific interests and sensibilities. What do you mean the studio behind Prince of Egypt, the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and The Wild Robot was making an entire length movie on Filipino folklore? What do you mean that in the year of 2026 after constantly scavenging for representation across mediums there was a singular project that was unabashedly and unambiguously made for Filipinos and by Filipinos? What Faustian bargain was struck that an original, animated story not centered around anyone remotely white could manifest in reality? I will concede that I was always going to be predisposed to favoring this movie. But that predisposition was always going to swing both ways. If this m…