Going to sleep is something we do every day, though, when we were kids, it certainly wasn’t easy. With family-friendly source material and a new (and adorable!) sleepytime ensemble, Orion and the Dark plays with this fact of childhood, but screenwriter Charlie Kaufman transforms it into something more as the title characters journey into literal midnight dreams, tell stories-within-stories, and return back home with a poetic repetition. It still has some of his existential despair– after all, the overly imaginative Orion literally contemplates the possibility of death through his many, many anxieties– but it doesn’t just play with the classic childhood fear. Kaufman transforms the bedtime story, and the act of storytelling itself, as co-creation and connection between generations of filmmakers and viewers, with this film’s surprisingly layered writing.
Genre: Animation, Comedy, Family, Fantasy
Actor: Aliki Theofilopoulos, Amy Hill, Angela Bassett, Aparna Nancherla, Carla Gugino, Colin Hanks, Golda Rosheuvel, Hira Ambrosino, Ike Barinholtz, Jack Fisher, Jacob Tremblay, Matt Dellapina, Nat Faxon, Natasia Demetriou, Nick Kishiyama, Paul Walter Hauser, Ren Hanami, Sean Charmatz, Shannon Chan-Kent, Sky Alexis, Toru Uchikado, Walt Dohrn, Werner Herzog
Director: Sean Charmatz
