by Jake Hjort, contributing writer
The world can be a terrifying place for a child. With imaginations racing and mysteries abound, fear has the perfect environment to foster when every bump or shadow could be a monster or foe. Such is the problem plaguing Orion (Jacob Tremblay), a young boy living in New York City with a journal full of his many fears and a clear anxiety disorder impacting his everyday life. One night, Orion finds himself face-to-face with his greatest fear, a corporeal manifestation of the Dark (Paul Walter Hauser) and sets off on a journey to face his fears and change his life.
As a former nervous child myself, I really resonated with Orion. Tremblay gives a great vocal performance, and the film does a great job of unwrapping and evolving his character as it progresses. At the beginning, Orion is defined by his fear and anxiety, but as he travels with Dark, both he and the audience learn that he can learn to live with them and be so much more. Hauser is great as Dark as well, clearly having a lot of fun, but also giving it more depth than I was expecting.
With a screenplay penned by the great Charlie Kaufman, there’s little surprise that there’s more to the script than meets the eye. Not only is Orion and the Dark a story of overcoming fear and anxiety, but it also provides some interesting meta-analysis on how we tell stories to our children. The film calls out how we often water down or sand off the rough edges on bedtime stories and parables, always wanting to wrap things up with a happy ending and a clear moral. In the real world, however, people regress or continue to struggle despite early success, and Orion and the Dark is willing to explore that more than most other children’s films do.
In many ways, Orion and the Dark is a spiritual successor to Pixar’s Inside Out. Although they do so in their own unique ways, both are interested in exploring similar themes of children confronting their negative emotions and learning the importance of embracing rather than dismissing them. Much like Riley learns the value of sadness, Orion discovers that darkness is not just the absence of light, but its own valuable entity that we could not live without.
It’s impossible to review any animated film without touching on the visual appeal, and unfortunately this is the biggest negative for Orion and the Dark. The animation itself, aside from sketchbook sequences, is fairly run-of-the-mill for a 3D animated film in this day and age, but I found the character designs to be downright unappealing. I’m not saying that I have an issue with more cartoonish designs or that I expect things to look photorealistic, but there are some odd choices with proportions and textures that made me question the film’s art direction from the onset. This is especially disappointing given that it is co-produced by DreamWorks and Mikros Animation, studios that have produced visually stunning films such as Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem in the past few years.
Despite the subpar animation, I do think that Orion and the Dark has enough going for it in the story department to make it stand out from the crowd. Anchored by strong vocal performances and Kaufman’s excellent script, the film kept surprising me with how mature it was willing to be in its exploration of fear. Lastly, I continue to be impressed by Netflix’s eye for quality animated films, as their catalogue of films, be they produced in-house or simply distributed as is the case with Orion and the Dark, can go toe-to-toe with any studio or streaming service lately.
Rating: High Side of Liked It
Orion and the Dark is currently streaming on Netflix
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