Esoteric screenwriter Charlie Kaufman turns his hand to family filmmaking with Orion And The Dark. Here’s the trailer.
Charlie Kaufman is synonymous with the surreal. Whether it’s the astonishingly original plot of Being John Malkovich, or the novel structure of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Kaufman’s films aren’t easy to categorise. We described his most recent film, I’m Thinking Of Ending Things, as ‘a bit odd’.
In 2020, he penned his first novel, Antkind, a sprawling absurdist epic about a man who is slowly driven insane by the memory of a three month long film only he has seen, and attempts to convince the world of its existence.
One thing he’s not known for, it’s fair to say, is family films. However, his latest screenplay is the surprisingly friendly-looking Orion And The Dark, an animated film which lands on Netflix next month. The last time Kaufman dabbled in animation, the result was 2015’s Anomalisa – an introspective stop-motion drama that most definitely wasn’t for kids.
At any rate, the synopsis for Orion And The Dark reads as follows:
Orion seems a lot like your average elementary school kid–shy, unassuming, harboring a secret crush. But underneath his seemingly normal exterior, Orion is a ball of adolescent anxiety, consumed by irrational fears of bees, dogs, the ocean, cell phone waves, murderous gutter clowns, and even falling off of a cliff. But of all his fears, the thing he’s the most afraid of is what he confronts on a nightly basis: the dark. So when the literal embodiment of his worst fear pays a visit, Dark whisks Orion away on a roller coaster ride around the world to prove there’s nothing to be afraid of in the night. As the unlikely pair gets closer, Orion must decide if he can learn to accept the unknown – to stop letting fear control his life and finally embrace the joy of living.
The voice cast includes Jacob Tremblay as Orion, Paul Walter Hauser as The Dark, along with Angela Bassett, Colin Hanks, Natasia Demetriou, Golda Rosheuvel, Nat Faxon, Aparna Nancherla, Ike Barinholtz, Carla Gugino and Werner Herzog as the narrator.
Spongebob Squarepants storyboard artist Sean Charmatz directed the film, Kaufman adapted the script from the novel of the same name by Emma Yarlett.
Orion And The Dark will stream on Netflix from the 2nd February.
Watch the trailer below…
