Movie review: ‘Forgotten Island’ (2026)
DreamWorks’ animated fantasy film gives writer-director Januel Mercado a chance to celebrate his Filipino heritage, pairing the studio’s family-friendly storytelling tradition with a distinctly personal cultural perspective.
DreamWorks’ Forgotten Island arrives as a 108-minute animated fantasy film with a clear sense of purpose behind its colorful adventure. Written and directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, the movie is not simply another studio production built around a high-concept title. It is also an opportunity for Mercado to bring his Filipino heritage into a major animated feature, much as other filmmakers have used mainstream animation to place their own cultural experiences at the center of a story.
That personal dimension is the most important thing to understand about Forgotten Island. The film belongs to a familiar family-entertainment tradition, but its significance comes from the perspective shaping it. The project gives Mercado room to celebrate Filipino culture rather than treating that culture as a decorative detail. In an animation landscape that increasingly makes space for creators to tell stories connected to their own backgrounds, that intention matters.
The comparison to Pixar’s Turning Red is useful. Domee Shi’s film became memorable not only because it was a lively coming-of-age comedy, but also because Shi could draw on her Chinese-Canadian heritage while telling a story about family, identity, embarrassment and change. Likewise, KPop Demon Hunters was described as Maggie Kang’s cultural love letter to South Korea. Forgotten Island follows that broader creative movement: a studio animated film shaped by a director’s relationship to a specific heritage and by a desire to share that relationship with a wide audience.
That does not mean the film needs to be approached as a lesson in Filipino culture. Its appeal is better understood through the balance between cultural celebration and accessible fantasy. DreamWorks has long specialized in stories that can be enjoyed by children while offering enough emotional and visual material for adults to appreciate. Forgotten Island fits into that tradition, presenting its cultural identity through the imaginative language of animation rather than separating it from the adventure.
The format itself is well suited to this kind of project. Animation can turn history, folklore, place and memory into images that would be difficult to reproduce in live action. It can make an island feel mysterious, inviting or almost mythical without requiring the audience to accept a rigidly realistic world. That freedom allows a filmmaker to communicate atmosphere as much as information. In a film built around a place that has been forgotten, the animated medium also suggests a natural interest in memory, discovery and the stories that survive when people choose to preserve them.
Even the title carries a useful tension. An island can be physically remote, but it can also represent a culture, a family history or a part of someone’s identity that has been overlooked. The word “forgotten” implies absence, while “island” suggests a distinct world with its own boundaries. Together, the two words create an invitation to wonder. They encourage viewers to ask what has been lost, who remembers it and what it might mean to find it again.
That is where Mercado’s Filipino heritage gives the project its strongest point of difference. The film is not merely described as an animated fantasy made by a Filipino filmmaker; it is presented as a chance for him to celebrate that heritage. The distinction is important. Representation is most effective when it is connected to affection and authorship. A culture should not appear in a film only as an exotic backdrop. It should feel like something the filmmakers know, value and want to communicate.
Working alongside Crawford, Mercado also places that personal perspective within the machinery of a large animation studio. Crawford is known here as the film’s co-writer and co-director, while Mercado shares both of those responsibilities. That partnership suggests a collaboration between established studio storytelling and a more specifically rooted creative voice. The result has the potential to feel welcoming to viewers unfamiliar with Filipino culture while remaining meaningful because it comes from a filmmaker with a personal connection to the material.
There is a delicate line to walk in any culturally specific family film. A movie must provide enough context for a general audience without flattening the culture it hopes to represent. It must also avoid turning heritage into a museum exhibit, where customs are displayed but never allowed to shape the emotional life of the characters or the world. Forgotten Island is most promising when its Filipino identity is treated as part of the film’s imagination and emotional foundation, not as an accessory placed around a generic plot.
The film’s release length, 108 minutes, places it comfortably within the expectations of a theatrical animated feature. That running time is long enough to establish a fantasy world and give its themes room to develop, while remaining accessible for a family audience. It also reflects the practical demands of this kind of storytelling. An animated adventure needs time to establish its setting, introduce its central conflict and allow the emotional meaning of the journey to emerge. The challenge is making that structure feel organic rather than merely efficient.
As a review subject, the film is particularly interesting because its creative identity is easier to identify than its plot details. The supplied material emphasizes its heritage and its place within a developing tradition of personal animated filmmaking. That emphasis points toward the movie’s larger value. It is part of a change in mainstream animation in which directors are increasingly encouraged to bring their own experiences to stories designed for international audiences.
That change benefits viewers in several ways. Children encounter a wider range of worlds and perspectives, while adults can recognize the care behind a film that is more than a collection of familiar genre ingredients. A Filipino perspective in a major animated fantasy can make the film feel new even if its broad ingredients—adventure, discovery and a fantastical setting—are recognizable. Familiar structure can be a strength when it gives an audience a comfortable way into an unfamiliar cultural perspective.
There is also value in seeing Filipino heritage presented through fantasy rather than only through strictly realistic drama. Fantasy permits culture to be connected with imagination, humor and spectacle. It allows a creator to say that heritage is not merely something to explain or defend; it is also a source of beauty, possibility and invention. That approach can be especially powerful for younger viewers, who may experience cultural representation first through the worlds that animation invites them to enter.
For viewers already familiar with Filipino culture, the film’s personal foundation may offer a sense of recognition. For everyone else, it provides an opportunity to encounter a perspective that may not often occupy the center of a large studio fantasy. The best culturally grounded films do both things at once: they give insiders something that feels considered, while giving outsiders a doorway rather than a lecture.
The collaboration between Crawford and Mercado is therefore central to the movie’s identity. A project like this needs both the confidence of a personal artistic voice and the clarity required to communicate across a broad audience. The presence of two writers and directors also suggests that the film has been shaped through dialogue, with Mercado’s heritage and Crawford’s studio experience contributing to the finished work. That combination can help prevent the story from becoming either too narrowly explained or too broadly generalized.
Of course, cultural intent alone does not guarantee a successful movie. Animation still needs characters audiences want to follow, a world that feels coherent and a story that earns its emotional moments. A beautiful cultural framework cannot substitute for dramatic momentum. The film’s ultimate success depends on whether the fantasy adventure gives its ideas room to live through action and feeling rather than announcing them from a distance.
Still, the foundation is encouraging. The idea of a forgotten island naturally supports a story about recovery and attention. It suggests that places and traditions can be neglected without disappearing completely, and that rediscovery can become an act of respect. That theme has broad emotional reach without erasing the Filipino context that makes this film distinctive. The setting can be specific while the questions remain universal: What do we remember? What do we lose? What deserves to be carried forward?
DreamWorks’ involvement gives Forgotten Island considerable visibility. A major studio release can reach families who might not seek out a smaller film centered on a particular cultural perspective. That platform brings responsibility, but it also creates possibilities. When a studio places a filmmaker’s heritage at the heart of an animated fantasy, it signals that culturally specific stories can belong in the largest and most accessible corners of popular entertainment.
The film’s September 2026 release places it within a busy modern animation environment, one in which audiences have grown more attentive to the people behind the stories they watch. Viewers are not only asking whether an animated film is funny or exciting. They are also asking whose experience shapes its world and whether the film treats that experience with genuine respect. Forgotten Island enters that conversation with a straightforward creative premise: Januel Mercado is being given the opportunity to celebrate his Filipino heritage through a DreamWorks fantasy.
That premise makes the movie worth discussing beyond the usual question of whether it delivers a satisfying family adventure. It represents a broader understanding of what mainstream animation can do. A studio film can be accessible without being culturally anonymous. It can use familiar fantasy conventions while giving them a different emotional center. It can introduce a filmmaker’s heritage to a global audience without suggesting that the culture must be simplified before it can be enjoyed.
In the end, Forgotten Island stands out less as an experiment in abandoning animated convention than as an example of how convention can be used to carry a personal voice. Its 108-minute running time, DreamWorks production and co-direction by Crawford and Mercado place it firmly within the commercial animation tradition. Its Filipino foundation gives that tradition a more individual destination.
That is the film’s most promising achievement. Like Turning Red and KPop Demon Hunters, it reflects a growing belief that cultural specificity can strengthen a popular film rather than limit it. Forgotten Island invites audiences into a fantasy world while reminding them that the most memorable imaginary places are often connected to something real: a heritage, a family story or a creator’s desire to make sure an important part of the world is not forgotten.