Orion and the Dark
NETFLIX
It’s rare nowadays that a mainstream animated effort goes above and beyond facile modes of storytelling, preferring to coddle instead of challenging audiences. Leave it to director Sean Charmatz and writer Charlie Kaufman to give young and old audience members something to ponder with Netflix (and DreamWorks)’s latest animated movie, Orion and the Dark, a surprisingly mature and thoughtful exploration of social anxiety through the figure of its titular character, voiced by Jacob Tremblay.
Orion is afraid of everything: his mind has perfectly calculated the probability of him being in danger with each action he takes, whether going on a field trip inside a packed school bus or talking to the girl he likes. He’s letting irrational fears dictate his life and writing all of them in a journal. Basically, he’s afraid of virtually everything, but one stands out among the rest that makes his legs shake uncontrollably: the dark. Orion can’t spend an ounce of time in the dark before he goes crazy and has many night lights to protect his room from it. Of course, a power outage happens, and it’s where Orion meets the literal and figurative version of The Dark (Paul Walter Hauser), who is tired of his constant irrational fear against him.
The Dark understands why people fear him but believes Orion’s fears are the most exaggerated. To dissuade his fears, The Dark convinces Orion to accompany him on his journey to bring darkness to the world before Light (Ike Barinholtz) shows up to brighten the day. During his journey, he meets Dark’s colleagues, Sleep (Natasia Demetriou), Unexplained Noises (Golda Rosheuvel), Insomnia (Nat Faxon), Quiet (Aparna Nancherla), and Sweet Dreams (Angela Bassett), who bring balance to the night as Dark fills the sky.
However, when they begin to question Dark’s purpose as Orion tells them about the beauty of Light and the rising sun, the balance between Light and Dark gets threatened as the latter believes he no longer has a purpose in the universe. It’ll now be up to Orion and his future daughter, Hypatia (Mia Akemi Brown), to save the universe before the world can no longer sleep if Dark decides to leave.
The film starts out in a rather conventional way, introducing audiences to Orion through his voice-over narration and creating an inciting incident that sets the plot in motion for the story to go from point A to point B quite easily. However, a rupture in its narrative is created rather quickly when Charmatz cuts to an adult version of Orion (now voiced by Colin Hanks) telling the story audiences are watching to his daughter, Hypatia, as the two walk to the Planetarium. This specific rupture breaks all conventional trappings Kaufman initially posits his story in for a far deeper exploration of Orion’s journey than it was seemingly envisioned.
Unfortunately, the animation isn’t on the same level as some of DreamWorks’ theatrical efforts, because a thoughtful story can only go so far without a striking visual palette supporting it. That doesn’t mean the film doesn’t have its fair share of evocative images, particularly when Dark travels with Orion as he fills the sky or when he enters a dream and begins to blabber on about Evil Cucumbers at the dental office, making for one of the most realistic depictions of a subconscious mind since Tony Soprano dreamed about Annette Bening. There are also a few fun vocal cameos, including one by Werner Herzog, who narrates a short film about the dark with titles designed by Saul Bass, a scene that will clearly entertain the purest of cinephiles.
But the overall animation style is rough around the edges, with a DTV-esque quality that undermines many of its larger-than-life setpieces (though it doesn’t look as bad as that Peacock Megamind sequel, whose trailer dropped not too long ago) and core message. Kaufman also convolutes its story further by bringing in a time travel aspect that could’ve worked but feels badly stitched together inside a story that doesn’t necessarily need it. Having the story being told by an adult version of Orion (and Hypatia, who completes it) seems like a good enough rupture to make audiences believe that everything going on in Kid Orion’s path is through his imagination, and anything else seems far-fetched.
It’s good that the voice cast is superb, with Tremblay leading the fort through a perfectly timed and modulated turn as Orion, while Bassett and Walter Hauser impress through its supporting cast. Kaufman’s story is also highly imaginative that, no matter the sharp and convoluted turns it takes through its final act, it will always be compelling to watch, no matter what. The ruptures in its core narrative are interesting enough to hold our attention, and its exploration of social anxiety couldn’t have been more timely in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic has drastically changed the world’s way of life and our interactions with others. Many are still anxious about going back into the world after such a traumatic event, and no one can judge them for still being overtly cautious about a virus that has killed and disabled millions of people worldwide. What Kaufman does in Orion and the Dark, however, is ask the people who aren’t yet ready to think about their lives for a bit, make them remember what it was like when they weren’t living in isolation, unafraid, versus now, watching the time pass and missing out on the best that life can offer before it’s too late.
Through the figure of Orion, he asks all of us to live a little and not care so much about the darkness surrounding life that depletes our time and energy. Without living, what’s the point of being here? Kaufman doesn’t take a stance on the matter and shows his characters for who they are, but gives thoughtful questions on the meaning of life in the wake of such a tragic moment in our history to make its audience think about why we’re all here, and why all of us should aspire to be less fearful and take a few risks every now and then. It hasn’t hurt anyone, and it won’t hurt you.