The Big Picture

Charlie Kaufman brings his imaginative approach to this animated children’s film that doesn’t talk down to its audience. Orion and the Dark explores fears, storytelling, and the complications of life in a deep and relatable way. The animation style, voice performances, and direction work together to create a delightful and visually stunning experience.

Charlie Kaufman has been one of the most inventive and distinctive screenwriters for decades, crafting idiosyncratic visions like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to writing and directing such mind-melding masterpieces like Synecdoche, New York and Anomalisa. But for Orion and the Dark, Kaufman’s first screenplay since 2020’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things, the writer has made a film unlike anything he’s ever done before—he’s made an animated kid’s movie. Even though Kaufman has never written a film quite like this in the past, he brings his same imaginative and ingenious approach that never talks down to its younger audience.

Orion and the Dark Meet Orion, a young boy who is afraid of heights, pets, and rendered nearly catatonic by the worst of all perils: the dark. The Dark takes Orion on a nighttime trip to prove to the youngster that the only thing to fear is fear itself. Release Date February 2, 2024 Director Sean Charmatz

What Is ‘Orion and the Dark’ About?
Orion (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) is a kid who is scared of everything, from bees to cell phone waves giving him cancer. He keeps a notebook of his fears, and his latest worry is a school trip to the planetarium, where he assumes he’ll make a fool of himself in some way. But of Orion’s many, many fears, his biggest is of the dark. His parents leave his bedroom door open at night, but even that isn’t enough, as he plugs in his collection of nightlights to make the night just as bright as the day.

But one night, the Dark (Paul Walter Hauser) comes to visit Orion. Of all the people scared of the dark, Dark explains that Orion is more scared than all of them. So Dark decides to show Orion that he isn’t something to be scared of, taking him on a journey to see what he does every night, alongside his coworkers Dreams (Angela Bassett), Sleep (Natasia Demetriou), Unexplained Noises (Golda Roshuvel), Insomnia (Nat Faxon), and Quiet (Aparna Nancherla).

But despite this already high-concept idea, that’s not enough for Kaufman, as we also jump forward to see that this is a story adult Orion (Colin Hanks) is telling his own daughter, Hypatia (Mia Akemi Brown)—which won’t be the only jump in the film’s storyline. Within this story-in-a-story, we further see Kaufman’s impact as this also becomes a film about how stories evolve and are passed down between generations. It’s in these moments where this does feel like the guy who wrote Adaptation discussing how children’s stories are told, and it’s quite fascinating—especially for a kid’s film.

‘Orion and the Dark’ Is Very Much a Charlie Kaufman Film
Image via Netflix

Kaufman is almost giving his treatise on how to write a story for kids with this meta aspect. For example, when adult Orion adds a new wrinkle to young Orion’s story with Dark, he asks his daughter, “Is it too much stuff?” to which she replies that it might be, but she likes it—which might be the greatest explanation of Kaufman’s storytelling so far. Later on in the film, Hypatia tells her father that he should let the story be complicated, that adults too often try to simplify narratives, and it just isn’t realistic to life. From there, Kaufman lets loose with his screenplay, throwing twists and turns into the story, creating a surprisingly intricate narrative that doesn’t go for easy solutions and delves into far broader topics than the original book by Emma Yarlett ever attempted.

Yet Kaufman and director Sean Charmatz (a former storyboard artist for such films as The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and Trolls World Tour) do all of this within a strong kid’s film before it goes down these even more original paths. The journey of Orion and Dark is delightful, with excellent voice performances by Tremblay and Hauser. Tremblay obsesses over the negative aspects of everything that comes Orion’s way, yet the performance manages to never make him irritating, but rather, a relatable kid who is dealing with the overwhelming nature of life. Hauser is also a perfect selection for this type of character, as we can feel the warmth in Dark simply through his voice, to a point that it makes us understand why Orion would be able to accept the dark after a single night’s adventure with him.

Charmatz’s direction has to make Kaufman’s concepts come to life in a way that is easily digestible to kids, and the combination of these two filmmakers works beautifully here. The animation style looks deceptively simple at first (from Mikros Animation, who worked with DreamWorks Animation before on Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie), but the way Charmatz plays with dark and light here is simply gorgeous. The look of the film both reminds of Yarlett’s picture book and Netflix’s usual animation style—a mixture you wouldn’t expect from a film with Werner Herzog cameos and a great David Foster Wallace joke.

‘Orion and the Dark’ Doesn’t Talk Down to Its Younger Audience
Image via DreamWorks Animation

This is all part of Orion and the Dark’s brilliance. It’s a film that, on the surface, looks like it would just be another standard Netflix animated film, but hiding within that veneer is a remarkably deep story about fears, storytelling, and the complications of life. Orion and the Dark isn’t a film to simply explain to kids why they shouldn’t be afraid of the dark, it’s a film that also shows that sometimes fears are warranted, and there’s no reason to be ashamed of being a bit worried about the things that scare us. When we see the adult Orion telling this story to his kid, we see that there are still moments where Orion is scared of the dark, even as he tells Hypatia this story of him and the dark. In life, one night facing your fears isn’t necessarily going to solve all your problems. As Hypatia says, let the story be complicated, and Orion and the Dark does a delightful job of embracing life’s complications.

While it might not be as visually impressive as something like Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs or Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, Orion and the Dark falls into this line of films from remarkable filmmakers attempting to present difficult and complex ideas to a younger audience. Orion and the Dark is the first great kid’s movie of 2024. It’s a delightfully smart and ambitious story that is equally powerful for children and adults alike.

Orion and the Dark REVIEWOrion and the Dark is a fascinating kid’s movie, a first for writer Charlie Kaufman, which embraces the complications of life and doesn’t talk down to its younger viewers. Release Date February 2, 2024 Director Sean Charmatz ProsCharlie Kaufman crafts a screenplay that is just as imaginative as his more adult-focused screenplays. Paul Tremblay and Paul Walter Hauser beautifully bring Orion and the Dark to life with their vocal performances. Director Sean Charmatz does a great job of bringing Kaufman’s concepts to life, without watering down their complexities.

Orion and the Dark is available to Netflix on February 2 in the U.S.

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