Orion And The Dark review: Charlie Kaufman pens a kid flick?

The notion of an animated feature for children written by Charlie Kaufman, the anxiety-riddled scribe of metaphysical nesting-doll movies like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, sounds about as unlikely as a G-rated Disney movie directed by David Lynch, or Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor composing a Pixar score. Yet those things did happen, to acclaim aplenty, and now, so has this. Orion And The Dark may look almost nothing like any Charlie Kaufman film to date, but it bears his personality. While that might be a bit much for the youngest kids, for 11-year-olds like those depicted in this story, it may strike a chord simply by refusing to underestimate their intelligence.

A previous Kaufman attempt at adapting a book, Adaptation., turned into a meta-narrative about adapting books instead. Here, he takes a children’s tome, one designed to help 4-year-olds overcome their fear of the dark, and makes it about existential dread, right at the age most kids are starting to experience such a thing without necessarily having a name for it. Director Sean Charmatz (Trolls: Holiday In Harmony) keeps the visuals kid-friendly, but he also keeps Kaufman’s voice recognizable throughout. And though Orion And The Dark appears to go through the motions of a family flick, it throws some serious curves en route to a loving yet emotionally devastating resolution.

Packing in more internal monologue in the first half hour than the entire original book probably contained within all of its pages, Orion And The Dark introduces its eponymous protagonist (Jacob Tremblay) as a preemptive anxiety attack keeps him from trying to sit next to the girl in school who likes him. He’s afraid of everything, from bees to flooded toilets to the possibility that his parents might secretly move out of town while he’s at school one day. Most of all, though, he fears the dark and still uses night lights which, at age 11, makes him a bit of an outlier.

Eventually, the Dark itself loses patience with Orion’s neuroses. Taking the form of a large hooded figure who talks like Seth Rogen (it’s actually Paul Walter Hauser, but he does sound like Pumbaa), Dark offers to de-mystify his entire process so that it won’t seem so scary anymore. A reluctant Orion goes along for the ride, and meets Dark’s fellow night creatures, who are a veritable Inside Out of evening characteristics: Quiet (Aparna Nancherla), Sleep (Natasia Demetriou), Insomnia (Nat Faxon), Unexplained Noises (Golda Rosheuvel), and Sweet Dreams (Angela Bassett).

Being neurotic, Orion can’t help but critique everything they do, while messing up all their routines … but hey, at least he’s not completely terrified of Dark itself now. Think Beau Is Afraid … for kids.

That might be where other family films would start to wrap things up, but Kaufman has some tricks up his sleeve. He takes surprising detours with wordy and complex concepts, at one point using a parody of the ending of Toy Story 3 to have Orion ridicule the concept of reincarnation, and effectively declare his atheism. Charmatz mixes the media some, with 2D animation used to bring Orion’s drawings to life, and a sort of 3D for the main story that feels like the Foxtrot comic strip in CG. Some of the edges look a little rough at times, which may be a choice, but it’s a choice that resembles incomplete rendering.

Will kids enjoy it? Let’s just say that the references to David Foster Wallace, Saul Bass, and Werner Herzog (playing himself) probably aren’t for them—but they’re very much for you. The original book requires a parent’s judgment call as to whether their 4-year-old is ready to face fears of the dark; the movie requires one regarding their 11-year-olds’ abilities to deal with fear of death, bullies, climate apocalypse, and literally everything else they can think of … and beyond. Or they may ignore all that and just look at the pretty pictures.

Kaufman may not be the guy whose bedtime stories you want read to your kids. The moment they’re old enough, though, they should appreciate his deconstruction of predictable tropes they’ve known forever. And parents who’ve been waiting years to say, “If you liked that, try Synecdoche, New York” can finally do so.

Orion And The Dark streams on Netflix starting February 2