Orion and the Dark

The movie is silly and fun enough to enchant younger audiences, not to mention impart life-balance lessons that kids from 8 to 80 ought to know.

Brought to life with a smooth and almost restrained kind of animation – all rounded edges and frames designed to breathe, rather than hyperactively cram in as much action as possible – and paced with a confident speed, Orion and the Dark will charm and entrance.

This is a clever, all-ages charmer.

What starts out as a sweet fairy tale turns into a metatextual romp that spirals in and out of itself, and gets deeply weird and weirdly deep. Sean Charmatz’s debut animated feature is an odd little gem that defies expectations.

So, while “Orion and the Dark” is on one hand a fun and briskly paced fantasy-adventure, it also functions nicely as a smart, thoughtful and often trippy exploration of existential dread.

Boasts the idiosyncratic anxiety, depression, and angst of its author’s work and the bouncy tone and matching visual style of every other recent cinematic kid’s fable—two flavors that, it turns out, don’t really go well together.

Orion and the Dark is about fear and overcoming it but this movie directed by Sean Charmatz has too much junk clogging up the vision.

IN A NUTSHELL: The story is about a young boy named Orion, who is afraid of everything, especially the dark. When “Darkness” is embodied, the personage takes Orion on a journey of discovery to face his fears. The movie was directed by Sean Charmatz. Writing credits go to Charlie Kaufmaan, Lloyd Taylor, and Emma Yarlett. THINGS I LIKED: Adorable Jacob Tremblay voices Orion. The rest of the characters are voice by talented actors like Angela Bassett, Colin Hanks, Paul Walter Hauser, Nat Faxon, Carla Gugino, Ike Barinholtz, Werner Herzog, and many more. The production companies involved in the project were DreamWorks Animation and Mikros Animation, which explains why the animation is so adorable. I love all of the details. A lot of young kids and their Millennial parents will be able to relate to the main character who has a lot of anxiety. There is a lot of humor, both visual and spoken. It’s funny to watch the character “Sleep” put people to sleep in various, often alarming, ways that always ends with a cute kiss. A little girl’s name is Hypatia, which means “highest” or “supreme.” Hypatia was a real woman who was the leader of the Neoplatonist school of philosophy in Alexandria. Keep watching during the final rolling credits to see some more animation done in the style of a child’s drawings. THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE: A few of the elementary school children have extremely mature vocabulary and insights. The little boy whines and complains the entire time. One of the characters even calls him “judgy.” The characters that are enjoyable are the night creatures. It takes 40 minutes before we hear any music. The movie has a bit of a one-note theme: overcoming fear. I quickly became bored and looked at my watch. There is a time/space continuum that doesn’t make very much sense. TIPS FOR PARENTS: Some “light” profanity like “OMG”. People and characters are in perilous situations.

Pimp my movies for this one. It's good for night, but useless for daytime movie watching. Dreamworks should work on this one.

Great animation and voice acting, story is simple and sweet, just wasn't really feeling the obvious Inside Out ripoff story.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Started okay but fall of really hard and in the end became pure cringe. Not worth.