“Being brave doesn’t mean not being afraid. It’s being afraid and doing it anyway.”
In our house, we don’t tell people not to be afraid of things. We talk about how it’s natural and that humanity has survived for generations through judicial use of fear. However, being so afraid as to avoid things that can help you (long-term or short-term) is not reason enough not to do them. In fact, we remind each other that, no matter your age, being afraid happens, but it’s what you do next that makes the difference. Do you hold onto that fear and let it rule you or do you confront it and do the thing anyway? This is a key component of the new Netflix/DreamWorks Animation release Orion and the Dark, directed by first-time feature filmmaker Sean Charmatz (Trolls Holiday in Harmony) and adapted by writer Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; i’m thinking of ending things) from the book by children’s author Emma Yarlett. Constructed from various animation styles that mix the solid and tangible with the untenable and ethereal, Orion and the Dark is the kind of family film that parents have been clamoring for, one which will entertain their families, but also allow them to share something significant so that its exploration can continue well after the adventure ends. Surprisingly rich and heartfelt while undeniably moving, Orion and the Dark reminds that not all that’s cloaked in darkness is bad and that being brave doesn’t mean the absence of terror or disquiet.
Orion voiced by Jacob Tremblay in ORION IN THE DARK. Photo Credit: DreamWorks Animation © 2023. Photo Courtesy of Netflix.
11-year-old Orion (Jacob Tremblay) is afraid of everything, from the reasonable to the imaginary, from bees and mosquitos to murderous clowns that lie in wait in the sewers. He’s anxious over what is *and* what could be, all while being completely aware of wanting to be and do more. One night, having had quite enough, he yells at the dark to leave him alone and is quite surprised when a shadowy figure appears in his bedroom, cyan eyes gleaming from beneath a black hood and cape. It’s Dark himself (Paul Walter Hauser) and it’s tired of all Orion’s badmouthing. Dark offers Orion a deal, come with him to see how important his job and the other nighttime operators are to the world and, by the end, he’ll no longer be afraid of him. Orion agrees, but nothing could prepare him for the wild and imaginative journey he would be lead on whose consequences lie beyond Orion’s existence and onto the rest of the world.
T-B: Dark voiced by Paul Walter Hauser and Orion voiced by Jacob Tremblay in ORION AND THE DARK. Photo Credit: DreamWorks Animation © 2023. Photo Courtesy of Netflix.
There’s a mistake with children’s films in the presumption that they need to be safe or soft. In the Trolls Universe, for instance, the first two feature films address real issues of war between neighboring peoples and cultural appropriation within one’s own. Both films are wrapped in bubble gum pop mash-ups with the occasional shift in genre while the worlds are intricately designed to look handmade, aspects which appeal to young audiences and help soften the larger thematic elements the narratives explore. In the How to Train Your Dragon Universe, three stories not only demonstrated that anything with a soul can have the same complex emotions as another, but that family can come in any shape, size, or species, as long as they protect and care for one another, all while involving varying aspects of love, death, and war. These are hard movies which lead to incredible payoffs that, even now, thinking of the final moments of the third film, makes this father choke-up a bit. There’s a place for silliness (Shrek and Madagascar universes), but one can be silly and still maintain poignancy that crosses from family entertainment into something meaningful (Megamind). This is the place where Orion and the Dark exists, a film whose characters and the world they inhabit sound, on paper, as if they belong in the silly camp, with their puerile presentations and approximations of the abstract concepts they represent, but the construction and execution of them help the picture transcend into something potent.
L-R: Dark voiced by Paul Walter Hauser and Orion voiced by Jacob Tremblay in ORION AND THE DARK. Photo Credit: DreamWorks Animation © 2023. Photo Courtesy of Netflix.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way — the inclusion of characters Sleep (Natasia Demetriou), Unexplained Noises (Golda Rosheuvel), Insomnia (Nat Faxon), Quiet (Aparna Nancherla), and Dreams (Angela Bassett) does come off a little like Pixar’s Inside Out (2015) with the abstract elements of our imaginations being given a pseudo-corporeal form. Thankfully, the way the art and character design work for their costumes, tools, and environmental interactions, that comparison doesn’t hold. One can’t help but giggle at the … creative … ways that Sleep helps struggling individuals to fall asleep or be impressed by the way that Quiet inhales, Kirby-style, all the noises in an environment, each noise represented by a colored squiggle that comes to rest within her. This may sound a little undercooked, a little too unsophisticated, but it speaks to the way the visual language of Orion matches that of its lead character and the way he sees the world. At 11, Orion carries a journal to draw his anxieties in hopes that he’ll become free of them, each drawing depicted as roughly handmade, and the world around him is given a similar touched-by-human look (think: The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)). It’s not like Mutant Mayhem (2023) in its rogue visual design that correlates to the youth of that film’s protagonists, but more like Across the Spider-Verse (2023) in its specificity of world design to convey meaning and tone. Orion’s world is one with imperfections, whereas that of Dark and his coworkers is cleaner, more fluid, and depicted more like created by watercolor. It’s imaginative and reflective, while conveying a sense of introspection. If one looks to the source material, one can see where the design team made their alterations and adaptations without sacrificing the things that made the original story engaging.
L-R: Insomnia voiced by Nat Faxon, Quiet voiced by Aparna Nancherla, Dreams voiced by Angela Bassett, Sleep voiced by Natasia Demetriou, and Unexplained Noised voiced by Golda Rosheuvel in ORION AND THE DARK. Photo Credit: DreamWorks Animation © 2023. Photo Courtesy of Netflix.
Don’t go into the film presuming that you know the beats since it’s a Kaufman story. His Eternal Sunshine is a deeply lovely and depressing film about two people who love each other so much that they manage to reconnect over and over, despite forgetting about each other again and again because they each *on purpose* wipe their own memories of their relationship. It’s beautiful and painful all at once to have two people so powerfully drawn to each other and yet unable to make it work. Orion isn’t that kind of story, one filled with a sense of bittersweet dread and impossibility, but it does bring with it a complexity that makes one reminiscence about the stories of one’s own youth and how they tested us, rather than coddled us, to think about life, existence, and what we’re afraid of. I’m not suggesting that Orion is going to be a source of generational trauma in the vein of The NeverEnding Story (1984), but it affords an opportunity to explore the things that unnerve us, that disquiet us, that challenges us on a genetic level and have open conversations about it with our kids. How is the next generation going to face the Dark if they don’t know it’s ok to be afraid and explore it anyway? How is the next generation going to have an easier time confronting their anxieties unless we share our own? How else do we — child, parent, or caregiver alike — ensure that anxieties aren’t treated as abnormalities and that uncertainty isn’t treated as something to avoid but to embrace unless we talk about it?
L-R: Orion voiced by Jacob Tremblay and Dark voiced by Paul Walter Hauser in ORION AND THE DARK. Photo Credit: DreamWorks Animation © 2023. Photo Courtesy of Netflix.
Much like we do with what goes on in the dark, one is going to come to Orion and the Dark with a certain expectation of contrived silliness as it inserts some comedy and weirdness as it translates abstract concepts into physical beings. One will even expect and be unsurprised by the general catalyst by which the adventure begins. But that’s not all from Orion as it possesses the kinds of surprises that reveal powerful messages of acceptance, creativity, friendship, and love. On top of it all, it communicates that which empowers children to take control of their fear by doing the thing despite the way it makes our palms sweat, our hearts race, and our skin grow cold. Being afraid is a part of being alive.
Be afraid, but do it anyway.
Available on Netflix February 2nd, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Netflix Orion and the Dark webpage.
Final Score: 4.5 out of 5.
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Categories: Films To Watch, Recommendation, Reviews, streaming
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