Orion and the Dark (2024)
Directed by Sean Charmatz
No — Orion and the Dark is not especially woke, scoring 23 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Orion and the Dark arrives from DreamWorks Animation by way of Netflix, adapted from Emma Yarlett's 2014 picture book and scripted by Charlie Kaufman, a pairing that sounds like a clerical error and turns out to be the film's chief pleasure.
Consciousness Markers
The voice cast is notably diverse, including Angela Bassett, Golda Rosheuvel, Aparna Nancherla, and Natasia Demetriou, with Sally and Hypatia voiced by Asian American performers. However, the film does not foreground casting as a statement or race-swap characters for commentary.
Orion's severe anxiety, catastrophic thinking, and extensive fear list are central and treated sympathetically, but the film frames them as childhood fears rather than explicit neurodivergence.
Charlie Kaufman's screenplay brings existential and meta-narrative musings, but the film delivers its message about facing fear gently rather than preachy.
Hypatia becomes a co-narrator who rewrites and resolves the story, and several female characters are present, but the film does not advance an explicit feminist agenda.
There are no LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext in the film.
The film contains no racial themes, commentary, or consciousness-raising elements.
The night/day balance is a fantasy plot device, not an environmental or climate-crisis allegory.
There is no critique of capitalism, wealth, or class structures in the film.
The film does not address body image, body diversity, or body-positivity themes.
The film is a fantasy story and does not revise or reinterpret historical events or figures.
Why it received this score
Orion and the Dark arrives from DreamWorks Animation by way of Netflix, adapted from Emma Yarlett's 2014 picture book and scripted by Charlie Kaufman, a pairing that sounds like a clerical error and turns out to be the film's chief pleasure. Our hero is an eleven-year-old boy with a diary full of catastrophes and a nervous system calibrated for disaster. The film treats his dread with patience and affection, letting the fear list stand as a character trait instead of a diagnosis, which keeps the psychology warm without turning the running time into a pamphlet on childhood anxiety. Then Night itself shows up, voiced with gravelly goodwill by Paul Walter Hauser, and the two set off on a tour of the nocturnal economy.
The voice cast is unusually varied for the genre, with Angela Bassett, Golda Rosheuvel, Aparna Nancherla and Natasia Demetriou filling out the night crew, and the film never pauses to congratulate itself for the arrangement. The screenplay's real ambition sits elsewhere. Midway through, the narrative hands the microphone to Hypatia, the narrator's daughter, who rejects her father's ending and rewrites it, inserting herself as the one who saves the day. It is a soft gesture toward a daughter's authority over her own story, delivered with a shrug instead of a manifesto.
Kaufman's fingerprints show up as existential tangents and a nested structure that eventually stacks three narrators deep, a bold move for a film aimed at children who mostly want to know whether the monster is friendly. The lessons about facing what frightens us are administered gently, more bedtime murmur than sermon, and the film resists the urge to state its moral at every turn. The night-versus-day business stays strictly meteorological, never drifting into allegory about climate or commerce. This is a handsome, well-meaning animated feature that respects its audience enough to leave a few ideas unresolved. It is a pleasant evening's viewing, and it knows better than to ruin the mood by raising its voice.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
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Synopsis
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.
Questions about Orion and the Dark
Is Orion and the Dark woke?
No — Orion and the Dark is not especially woke, scoring 23 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Based.
Does Orion and the Dark have any woke elements?
2 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Representation Casting (35) and Neurodivergence (30). On Representation Casting: The voice cast is notably diverse, including Angela Bassett, Golda Rosheuvel, Aparna Nancherla, and Natasia Demetriou, with Sally and Hypatia voiced by Asian American performers.
How does Orion and the Dark compare to other 2024 movies?
It ranks #61 of the 189 films from 2024 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is The Six Triple Eight (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.