Orion and the Dark (2024)

 

Genre: Family/ Comedy

Time: 1h 33mins

Director: Sean Charmatz

Quick Summary: A boy with an active imagination faces his fears on an unforgettable journey through the night with his new friend: a giant, smiling creature named Dark.

I am tired now

Since this was DreamWorks I was actually really looking forward to this. Unfortunately, I was very bored and almost fell asleep once or twice trying to watch this. I didn't actually finish this either as by the hour mark I had lost all interest with whatever was happening; I barely remember this. 

First of all I will get my few praises out of the way. DreamWorks has always been fantastic at animation, this being another good one. Sort of storybook looking and very nice on the eyes, honestly it really suits the story considering it's being told by an adult. I can never fault them for animation and design which is another I did really like about this. The various designs of “nighttime entities”, like insomnia being a buzzing green mosquito and quiet being a fuzzy fluffball that takes in all noises. Thought was put into these designs, but it's a shame we only got a few. I think I expected more, like we got sweet dreams, why not nightmares? Or we got one Daytime entity which was light, why not more things to do with the morning?

Another thing I do want to talk about is how well they presented anxiety, especially for a film directed towards kids. They humanized it and it's translated so well so that kids can understand, and possibly relate because of how realistic the portrayal is. Not even for a second did I feel like it was over the top or extreme.

Now praise aside, unfortunately this is incredibly boring. It's slow and dull for a good portion of the film, which is never a good thing for the beginning. I was constantly waiting for it to pick up, but then all of a sudden the pacing went out of the windows and things started happening way too quickly. It was one thing onto the next, and honestly not much was happening. I couldn't tell you what happened in the bits that I watched as it was just so all over the place. Then for some reason the middle of the film it started building up to a climax, as all the issues had been basically solved so guess what. They had to make more and honestly it got really tiring.

Then the one thing to top it off was the fact that the kid is the most obnoxious, annoying, kid I have ever seen. I actually wish I could throw something at them I hated them that much. Everything this guy did, made everything so much worse. It was one of those types of kids that are quirky too. 

Major yawn fest with some good designs.

4/10