Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
“Aubade” by Philip Larkin
It’s not often I open a post with an excerpt from a poem (in fact, it’s never happened before) and don’t worry if poetry’s not your thing; it’s not a new format. But the movie I am bringing to you today reminded me so much of this poem, that I’ve had open in a tab in my browser since I first heard it in an episode of Devs in 2020, that they’ve become forever intertwined. Meet Orion, the boy with so many fears that he keeps a sketchbook to document everything he’s afraid of. And it’s a lot. Murderous sewer clowns, cell phone cancer, mixing up his words when called on in class even though he knows the answer, cats, dogs, etc. He’s scared of getting picked on by his bully. He’s scared of standing up to his bully and accidentally killing him graveyard dead. It’s pretty much everything. At one point, the bully grabs his sketchbook and goes through his fears and Orion just thanks him. It was such a pitiable moment that the bully doesn’t even know where to go from there. Orion is the poster child for anxiety.
At the end of the school day, he is the only student who doesn’t hand in his permission slip for the class field trip to the observatory—you guessed it, because he’s afraid of everything from the bus ride over to being crushed by the exhibits falling from the ceiling. Then, as he arrives home, he reveals the saddest fear of all; that his parents will move away while he’s at school, leaving him on his own. That’s completely unfounded, from what we see of his parents. They seem supportive of Orion; they understand his fears and they don’t think something is wrong with him. They don’t try to correct his behavior and they’re never disparaging in any way. There’s no “that boy ain’t right” moment with Orion’s parent. Sure, they want to encourage him to face his fears, but they don’t push him and there’s no talk about trying to fix him, which is very refreshing. And then, as night falls, we get to see Orion’s greatest fears come to fruition. Darkness. And death, can’t forget death. He lies awake at night trying to imagine what death is like—the vast, meaningless darkness that awaits us all, enveloping us in its nothingness. It’s at this point that I should note that Orion is a 5th grader, about 11 years old. Wait until you get to your 30s, kid. It gets rough. And that’s how the first ten minutes of DreamWorks’ Orion and the Dark goes. Good god, this is a relatable movie.
And then the dark shows up. I mean Dark, the embodiment of darkness, the being that makes the nighttime all across the world as the sun dips itself beneath the horizon. He’s fed up with how afraid Orion is of him and how much his screaming and crying at the darkness interrupt his nightly work. But more than that, Dark is hurt. Most people are afraid of him in some way or another, people think he’s evil or ominous or foreboding. As Dark, voiced by Paul Walter Hauser (Cobra Kai, The Fantastic Four: First Steps), explains it, “so much of how you see yourself is through the eyes of others”. It’s painful for him to be hated by so many and Orion, voiced by Jacob Tremblay (Room, Luca), is the one who hates him the most. Dark makes a proposal: Orion comes with him for the night to witness what he does and hopefully he’ll see that the dark isn’t so scary after all. Of course, Orion refuses at first because he’s, well, too damn afraid. But not wanting to be afraid of everything for his entire life, he reluctantly agrees to go with Dark. It’s at this point, we cut to the future, with Orion the adult played with real Colin Hanks energy (which makes sense because, as I looked it up, he is voiced by Colin Hanks of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and King Kong fame) telling the story to his own daughter Hypatia. This was an unexpected form of narrative structure, but a nice one—the scenes with adult Orion and Hypatia are unbelievably cute, reminding me of 8-Bit Christmas’s narrative structure. It’s not the easiest structure to pull off, but when it works, it’s so satisfying.
Dark introduces Orion to the rest of the Night Entities, taking a break between time zones: Insomnia, Quiet, Sleep, Unexplained Noises, and Sweet Dreams. The character design here is really interesting; Quiet is an adorable mouse-like fluff ball, Insomnia a bug like creature that buzzes in your ear, Unexplained Noises a bit like a robot. They don’t love that Dark brought a kid around, but they go about their business anyway, trying to help Dark convince Orion that there’s nothing really all that bad about the night. Although, if you’re keeping track, Insomnia and Unexplained Noises probably aren’t the best examples; being two Night Entities meant to keep people up at night, whispering your insecurities into your ear and making you wonder just what the hell made that sound (it could be a murderous sewer clown heading your way). We also meet the one everyone loves to see—Light. Light, voiced by Ike Barinholtz (Neighbors, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent), is exactly what you expect him to be: the embodiment of morning, daytime, and sunlight, the thing that brings life to the planet. Together, they form the constant cycle of day and night that envelopes our world, though they can never be in the same place at the same time. Should Light ever catch Dark, well, what happens when you shine a light into a dark corner of a room?
From there, the two of them go on their adventure together, with Dark trying to get Orion to confront his fears and, well, sometimes failing. As Hypatia likes to point out to her dad, parents may like simple stories with neat resolutions, but that’s not real. And as Hypatia puts it, the only stories that really help are the real ones—so while simple stories may be the most convenient for parents to convey complex moral conundrums in easily digestible ways, that’s not how they always work out. Just because you face your fears doesn’t mean they go away and certainly not something as primal and evolutionary as the fear of the dark. Cavemen probably didn’t invent fire to cook meat (since we all know it tastes better raw anyway); I mean, I’m sure warmth on cold nights was one of the motivating factors, but a fire fending off the dark of night is most certainly one of the reasons as well. So true stories resonate more because they’re true and I think we can see the value in being honest about things, especially with children. I think that sort of honesty imbues kids with realistic expectations for life (just like Orion’s parents telling him to face his fears rather than be fearless). There’s something so human in honesty, a vulnerability that people connect with, and that’s something this movie definitely is. Honest and vulnerable.
Even the things we’re afraid of can have fears of their own; as Dark faces his own existential crisis, he tells Orion that his fear is more easily managed because Orion is there with him. And I think that drives home one of the messages of the film, that simply being there for someone—not offering solutions, not trying to “fix” them or their problems (an issue I, admittedly, have myself, but I’m working on it)—can make as much of a difference as anything else. One of the things that I find most interesting about Orion and the Dark is that Light isn’t the enemy; he’s not an antagonist, as much as Dark seems envious that people are happy to see Light and very much less than excited when he rolls around. Light’s not the enemy, fear is. It’s the voice in our head that says we’re not good enough, not smart enough, not thin enough, not tall enough, not enough period. This is a movie about how we need ourselves and each other to get through the world, because it is a scary world out there. Just watch the news for 30 seconds, our reality is terrifying. But it’s through facing our fears that we grow.
The movie isn’t about eradicating fear. It’s about learning to live with it and through it, not letting it dictate our lives and stop us from experiencing what life has to offer. Fear can paralyze us and keep us from truly living. Some fear is good, natural, and necessary. But it shouldn’t determine our every action. Bravery may save no one from the grave, as Larkin told us, but it may save us from ourselves. This is a movie that is ostensibly for kids, but it’s about real adult issues. Orion has very real fears that go beyond the worry of saying the wrong thing in class—the fear of death, the fear of the unknown, the fear of being alone; these are real things that grip adults everyday. We live with this fantastic fear of everything and somehow most of us are able to cope with it and make it through our days. The nights, though, those can be quite a bit harder. Like Orion, I myself have spent many nights staring at the ceiling, with Insomnia whispering my insecurities and fears in my ear, the ever-present thoughts of what has and will and will not come to pass. [T]his is what we fear—no sight, no sound, no touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, nothing to love or link with…but slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape, and we go about our daily business. Unlike Orion, we don’t get mythological beings to guide us through facing our fears; instead we have to rely on each other. A burden shared is a burden lightened. And that is the overarching message here; that with each other, with empathy and understanding, we can face the fears that would otherwise petrify us in place, turning us into stone like we just lost a staring contest with Medusa.
Orion and the Dark may be an animated film, but it’s definitely not just for kids. It is as deep and complex as the night itself, but funny and heartwarming as well. Orion is a perfect stand-in for anyone who has felt fear or anxiety gripping at that pump in their chests, and it’s shocking to me that this hidden gem went as under the radar as it did. It’s rare that a movie approaches fear and anxiety with such care as this does and it deserves to be celebrated. It lacks the catchy tunes of KPop Demon Hunters, but it’s every bit the real, adult story that Demon Hunters is. It was apparently released straight to Netflix after the failure of Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken to avoid taking a bath at the box office, it snuck through 2024 being an anonymous film, despite its 91% RT score, that is quite simply one of the strongest, most beautiful, and most real stories I’ve seen. This is DreamWorks dipping into some of that Pixar magic for 93 straight minutes. And I can’t recommend it highly enough.
