Orion And The Dark review: Charlie Kaufman pens a kid flick?
The neurotic scribe behind mind-bending hits like Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine applies his deconstructive talents to a brilliant work of family animation
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).