DreamWorks' Forgotten Island blends Eternal Sunshine with KPop Demon Hunters

DreamWorks today released the first trailer for the animated movie Forgotten Island, a fantasy about two best friends losing their memories of each other after getting sucked through a portal into a magical island. Directed by the Puss in Boots: The Last Wish team, Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, the film stars singer-songwriter Gabriella Sarmiento Wilson (who performs under the name H.E.R.) and Lisa Frankenstein‘s Liza Soberano as “high school graduates Jo and Raissa, who have been best friends since grade school but are now about to embark on separate life paths.”

Animation fans will immediately notice from this trailer that the movie continues the wild visual stylization of action that Crawford and Mercado used in The Last Wish, and that’s increasingly becoming a hallmark of modern animated American movies, from Columbia Pictures’ The Mitchells vs. the Machines to KPop Demon Hunters. Colorful action lines swirl around bodies in motion, manga-style reaction emojis pop up over the characters’ heads in emotional moments, bodies distort and stretch to emphasize the line of movement. The color palette is an intense, vivid neon. The energy is frantic.

But cinephiles in general may see more associations with Michael Gondry’s beloved 2004 romantic fantasy Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where a heartbroken man (Jim Carrey) undergoes a procedure to erase his memories of his ex-girlfriend (Kate Winslet), then ends up chasing disintegrating visuals of those memories through his own mind. Forgotten Island is drawing from a lot of different elements here, including Filipino folklore. Here’s DreamWorks’ plot summary:

While celebrating their last night together, Jo and Raissa stumble upon a mysterious portal that transports them to the fantastical island of Nakali, packed with magical and mythological creatures they grew up hearing stories about from their Filipino families.

Some of these figures will become friends, some foes. Joined by well-meaning-but- hapless weredog Raww (Dave Franco) and a small-but-mighty pack of pals, Jo and Raissa must face The Dreaded Manananggal (Tony winning icon Lea Salonga), the most feared creature on the island. When they discover that the memories of their entire friendship are the price for returning home, Jo and Raissa will race to find a way to leave the island before they forget each other forever.