I didn’t know Charlie Kaufman would have been a strangely important new voice in the animated kids realm. The amazing writer is best known for complicated, incredible studies of the mind. Even his one attempt to try something animated featured, um, well, puppet sex. So I guess I underestimated Kaufman’s ability to translate his unique voice to something aimed for kids…to my own detriment, because Orion and the Dark is going to speak to a much different type of child than most standard animated fare, and we’re all the better for it.
Sweet, scared Orion (Jacob Tremblay). Beset on all sides by classic kid problems (bullies, scared around a crush, answering a question wrong), the poor kid exudes nervous energy, with a new fear showing up with each strange noise or new thought. Times are worst for Orion at bedtime. Alone. In the dark. Orion’s so scared of what’s in the darkness that the actual “Dark” (Paul Walter Hauser) shows up in Orion’s bedroom one night. Frustrated by everyone being scared of him, Dark takes Orion on a day long trip through Dark’s life, which would either scare Orion more, or alleviate his fears which Dark is hoping will happen.
At first glance, Orion and the Dark feels like classic kids storytelling: a kid is scared of something, and learns in 90 minutes not to be scared of that thing anymore. But Charlie Kaufman knows life doesn’t work like that, the anxiety ridden writer that he is. Orion’s message is for all the anxious kids out there who can’t help but get trapped in their own fatalistic thoughts in their heads and have no idea how to process them. The opening montage sets the stage perfectly, as Orion’s smallish concerns escalate as he thinks through them in his head, eventually jotting them down in a notebook to help calm himself down. And as Orion spends time with Dark, he finds a kindred spirit: someone constantly dealing with other people’s frustration at his presence, and internalizing all those insecurities about himself. It is in this journey that Kaufman slips in his greatest trick: we also see this story time jump, between Orion as a kid, and then as an adult (voiced by Colin Hanks), modifying the story with his daughter Hypatia (Mia Akemi Brown) to help her deal with her anxieties in her own way (she’s more of a poet). This jumping between time frames shows all those nervous kids watching two things: 1) You still can be scared as an adult still: that doesn’t go away, but 2) you can survive this and managed it, and even use it to make something good, Kaufman’s greatest lesson. He never outlines it specifically in Orion and the Dark, but I found myself welling up as old generation teaches new generation how to understand and manage anxieties in their own, specific way.
And thankfully, director Sean Charmatz’s steady hand keeps the movie from going too Kaufman for the kids. The voyages with Dark and Orion are a delight, watching all sorts of night skies change colors as light (Ike Barinholtz) covers for Dark, and vice versa. We also meet some of dark’s friends, from the wondrous Sweet Dreams (Angela Bassett) to the miniscule adorable Quiet (Aparna Nancherla) to the unhinged cruel fun of Insomnia (Nat Faxon), as Orion learns about what they do, why they are important, all in a fun relatable way that kids will understand and hopefully come out less scared about after the movie. At its best, Orion and the Dark channels the magnificent Inside Out, helping explain complicated feelings and emotions, especially scary ones, to kids with the power of animated storytelling’s ability to show amazing colorscapes and imagery, keeping things zippy and exciting along the way.
So what’s next for Charlie Kaufman? Even though I hope he doesn’t get trapped inside his head, whenever he comes back out something amazing usually follows. Hopefully he can keep genre hopping. His true horror movie would be something, but I think I’m most rooting for the disaster that would be his Young Adult love triangle, where literally nothing happens because everyone’s too scared to do anything, ha!