Forgotten Island (2026)

Forgotten Island gives us something that shows us the importance of memory, friendship and nostalgia, but its unrelenting madness often makes it hard to distinguish what hits and what misses.

DreamWorks throws up yet another madcap animated adventure, delivering a colourful, frantic tale of two best friends desperate to remain in each other's lives forever. Combining Filipino folklore, imaginative fantasy and a story about friendship threatened by the passage of time, Forgotten Island moves at breakneck speed, telling us the story of Jo (H.E.R.) and Raissa (Liza Soberano), as they prepare to finally go their separate ways after graduation.

We get the backstory of their friendship: they first meet outside the principal’s office and go on to create lifelong memories, most importantly, adding charms to their friendship bracelets. Much of their time spent together is spent wistfully dreaming of the folklore tale of Nakali, a magical world reached by portal that Jo’s grandma Fatima has spent many hours telling them about. And on the evening when the story really begins, Raissa reveals to Jo that she’s moving to America to go to college, a fact she’s been hiding from her. This is not how things were meant to be, it seems, certainly not according to Jo, who accuses Raissa of just doing what her parents want her to do.

This row is cut short by the appearance of the long-sought-after portal on the beach, and if the pair didn’t go through it, we wouldn’t have a film. What Forgotten Island then does is pull the rug from under us somewhat, with the pair then waking up the morning after their arrival. They’ve already spent a night in Nakali, and can’t remember a thing. You’re immediately thinking of The Hangover (2009), and although Forgotten Island couldn’t be further from Todd Phillips’s film, this uses the same sort of set-up as the pair try to retrace their steps and find their way home, having lost the sand dollar that opened the portal.

Along the way, they befriend a were-fog (Dave Franco), a three-eyed demon baby (Manny Jacinto) and a Mermahn (Kevin McCann), to name but a few of the increasingly bizarre characters the film unleashes on you. Oh, and a torso-detaching demon (Lea Salonga) hunts them the entire time, though they have no idea why.

What both helps and hinders the film, directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, is its unrelenting madness. It moves at breakneck speed, throwing so much at you it’s often hard to distinguish what hits and what misses. There’s a fusion of animation styles to get your teeth into as well, and it even manages to throw in a live-action cameo of the handshake between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers from Predator (1987), a handshake that’s mirrored by Jo and Raissa. The point of the reference is both welcome and ultimately meaningless. We don’t need it to believe in their friendship; the first twenty minutes of the film do that job for us.

Perhaps that in itself underlines the good and bad of Forgotten Island. DreamWorks are no mugs; some of their recent films are up there with their best (2024’s The Wild Robot, 2025’s Dog Man), but Forgotten Island doesn’t reach those heights. It does, however, give us something that shows us the importance of memory, friendship and nostalgia; the film itself is perhaps a metaphor for the mad ride of life itself. ★★★ 6.9/10