Orion and the Dark is a decently amusing conceptual animated film available on Paramount+. Conceptual in the same way Inside Out, Soul, Elemental, and Luck were conceptual. Big, abstract, or weird ideas personified. In this case, it’s the concept of Darkness… but also quiet, insomnia, dreams, mysterious noises, and sleep.

The film is about an anxiety-ridden kid named Orion who is scared of everything, but most of all of the dark. So Darkness shows up to say hi and would you mind not screaming every night? Dark takes him on his rounds to show him that he’s not all bad.

This movie is pretty decent. I laughed a bunch early on over the film’s casually chaotic sense of humor… mostly shown in anarchic doodles but also a little easy-going psychosis (looking at your, sleep). This kind of humor largely dries up leaving a pretty ok film, nothing uproarious but fairly entertaining.

Conceptually, Darkness is a pretty good character even if Seth Rogan should sue (Paul Walter Hauser is clearly doing an impersonation, sans the laugh). The rest of the concepts – dreams, insomnia, etc. are amusing though I frown at the idea these are all the night/darkness concepts they could come up with. I especially didn’t like “mysterious noises” because her character model is an old tape deck so I was thinking she should be “electronics that keep us up at night”…

The oddest bit is that it isn’t really just a movie about darkness and his friends. It’s just as much about bedtime stories… and it goes deep and weird. Mainly because it introduces the theme halfway through the movie and then adds layers as it goes. It’s kind of clever… but also kind of feels like they ran out of ideas and hurry-up scrambled to find something to pad the runtime.

But it’s a pleasantly short film and ends more-or-less when it should. It’s better than I was expecting but not on the tier of some of those other Conceptual animated films (except Luck… it eats Luck alive).

Score: 78