Who can’t relate to feeling afraid of the dark? At its heart, however, it wasn’t really the dark itself that troubled our young, developing minds. It was more about the anxieties and complicated thoughts that came along for the ride under the cover of night — concepts that most of us couldn’t even articulate at the time but were no less terrifying to face without running to our parents’ bedroom or reaching for the reassuring glow of a night light. It’s a universal phobia baked right into our DNA, so it makes perfect sense that a movie like “Orion and the Dark” would literalize the concept for a generation of kids raised on Pixar movies. What’s far more unexpected, however, is the fact that this animated tearjerker goes even further and gives plenty for parents to chew on, too.
Directed by animation veteran Sean Charmatz and written by Charlie Kaufman (yes, that Charlie Kaufman), the movie follows young Orion (Jacob Tremblay) whose fear of the dark is really more of a cover for his fear of, well, everything. After one particularly bad meltdown finally causes Dark (yes, the physical embodiment of darkness voiced by Paul Walter Hauser) to show up and confront the poor kid, Dark whisks Orion away on one long nighttime journey to see if he can’t convince him that he’s not so bad after all. This is a pretty standard setup, but things take a truly meta-turn with the introduction of a powerful framing device that allows the story to shift into another gear entirely. Suddenly, a simple kid’s story becomes a generational tale about parenting, the importance of storytelling, and facing our most existential fears. Just have a tissue box handy.
“Orion and the Dark” is currently streaming on Netflix.