Netflix animation film “Orion and the Dark”, which was released in last week, is a simple but engaging children’s story decorated with interesting ideas and visuals. While its narrative structure may be a bit confusing to its main target audiences around its last act, the film has enough wit, personality, style to hold their attention, and it is certainly a witty and likable product to be savored and appreciated.

At first, we are introduced to Orion (voiced by Jacob Tremblay), a shy and neurotic young boy who has been constantly afraid of many different things. For example, he wants to get closer to a certain girl in his school, but he worries about being rejected by her, and he even flinches from a good opportunity to befriend her later. While his parents are loving and understanding, he cannot help but worry about the worst possibilities, and, above all, he always fears being left alone in the darkness of his room at every night.

In the middle of another fearful dark night of his, Orion lets out his anxiety and frustration toward darkness, and, what do you know, there actually comes Dark (voiced by Paul Walter Hauser). Turning out to be much jollier than he seems on the surface, Dark is willing to show more about himself, and Orion eventually agrees to accompany his unexpected visitor despite his initial hesitation.

As flying around here and there around the world, Dark shows Orion how he works at every night, and we get some wonderful visual moments as Dark cheerfully covers the sky with his darkness. In addition, he introduces Orion to several colleagues of his: Sleep (voiced by Natasia Demetriou), Insomnia (voiced by Nat Faxon), Unexplained Noise (voiced by Golda Rosheuvel), Quiet (voiced by Aparna Nancherla), and Dream (voiced by Angela Bassett). Whenever Dark unfolds its darkness across the sky, these five entities of night, which may remind you a bit of those colorful emotion figures in Pixar Animation film “Inside Out” (2015), do their respective jobs, and I particularly enjoyed how Sleep and Insomnia frequently complement each other.

Of course, there is also Light (voiced by Ike Barinholtz) because there is no darkness with light, after all. Whenever Light comes with its blinding force of light for beginning another day, Dark always has to go away along with his nocturnal colleagues, and he certainly do not like Light for that and several other reasons including the ever-bright confidence of Light, which surely makes Dark feel inadequate about himself at times.

While witnessing more of many fascinating things from Dark and his nocturnal colleagues, Orion becomes more comfortable with darkness as appreciating the, uh, bright sides of darkness, but the situation becomes a bit more serious when Orion inadvertently causes a conflict between Dark and his nocturnal colleagues. That leads to a potentially catastrophic situation for everyone on the Earth, and that is when Orion must be more active and courageous for taking care of this troubling circumstance for himself.

Orion’s adventure story is often alternated with a subplot between Adult Orion (voiced by Colin Hanks) and his daughter, who is smart enough to see through her father’s ongoing bedtime story. As they push and pull each other over his story, the story becomes a bit more complex than before, and we are not so surprised when Orion’s daughter comes to participate in the story much more than before.

The film is based on the children’s book of the same name by Emma Yarlett, which is incidentally adapted by Charlie Kaufman. As the screenplay writer of several brainy complex films such as “Being John Malkovich” (1999) and “Eternal Sunshine in the Spotless Mind” (2004), Kaufman is certainly the last one you can expect to be the adapter of such a simple and unsophisticated children’s story like this, but Kaufman’s adapted screenplay keeps everything simple in the story while occasionally showing his own touches. During the sequence where Orion and Dark go inside a sleeping person’s mind along with Dream, the movie naturally enters the area of surrealism, and we are reminded again of how Kaufman has always been occupied with the state of mind throughout his body of work.

The film is buoyed a lot by the spirited voice acting of several notable voice cast members. While Jacob Tremblay earnestly holds the center of the story, Colin Hanks, Ike Barinholtz, Natasia Demetriou, Pat Naxon, Golda Rosheuvel, Aparna Nancherla, and Angela Bassett have each own moment to shine, and Paul Walter Hauser, who has steadily alternated between comedy and drama during last several years as shown from “I, Tonya” (2017) and “Richard Jewell” (2019), is surely a standout in the bunch. While deftly depicting the humorous sides of his character, Hauser is also poignant with his character’s vulnerable sides, and he and Tremblay effortlessly click well with each other as their characters come to bond more with each other along the story.

On the whole, “Orion and the Dark”, which is directed by Sean Charmatz, is a little enjoyable animation film which handles its rather familiar story and characters better than expected. I wish the movie explored the story and characters a bit more, and I am mostly satisfied with the overall result, and I gladly recommend it to young audiences and their parents. Who know? They may become interested in Kaufman’s other works such as “Anomalisa” (2015) later, and they will probably appreciate “Orion and the Dark” more.