Subject: Film Review: Orion and the Dark (2024) For: #movie #reviews Type: “Inception” for Children. Time Travel. Existential Dread. Oddity level: Pretty Odd Image: Orion and Hypatia flying with a children’s version of The Endless Short link: https://dansu.org/review-orion-and-the-dark I stopped watching films and TV shows in 2007. I didn’t see either again on a regular basis until 2021. In 2021, I started to watch #videos from different sources. I purchased a pile of BluRay discs, for example, at an estate sale. In the past few years, I’ve used yt-dlp to D/L foreign and/or classic films from YouTube as well. I think that I’ll post reviews of #films that I’ve watched here periodically because, why not. The reviews might be helpful to people who are looking for lesser known oddities. I’ll discuss both regular films and “family” films including foreign language examples of both. Subtitles are available online for the foreign films. The first film to be formally discussed in this series is “Orion and the Dark”. “Orion and the Dark” is a 3D-anim family film that is notable for being an “Inception” for children. The frame, the nature of what it is that we’re watching, is a nested doll thing that shifts repeatedly. “Orion” is similar to the original 1984 “Neverending Story” film in this respect. [Run away from the “Neverending” sequels.] “Neverending” had three levels of framing. “Orion” is far less of a classic, but it has four levels, one more than “Neverending” did, and handles them well enough. The Rotten Tomatoes critics score for “Orion” is 91% but the general audience score is only 57%. The difference of 34% is unusually large. It reflects the fact that some children who saw the movie said, “WTH was that?“ though others found it entertaining. In general, it’s difficult to make nested doll plots, existential dread, and breaking the 5th or 6th wall work in films that are for both adults and children. Oddly enough, two different films both titled “The Navigator” (1986 and 1988) made the existential dread part work and the 1988 film had “Inception” elements as well. I suppose that the 1988 film was closer to adult #horror than to a children’s film, but both “Navigators” did feature time-traveling children as protagonists [as does “Orion and the Dark”]. The protagonists of “Orion and the Dark” are: A boy dragged into the backstage of reality much as it happened in “Time Bandits” (1981). Or a boy and a girl who are trying to fix reality. Or a man and the same girl in a different decade. Or another boy who is an homage to the 1970s YA time-travel novel “Green Futures of Tycho”. [For those who know the 1970s novel that I’m referring to, Tycho in the film is a reference to Tycho in the novel. FWIW The book is 50 years old as of 2027.] Another interesting point is that the supernatural group which Orion and Hypatia meet in “Orion and the Dark” could be considered a friendlier version of Neil #Gaiman’s “The Endless”. [The attached poster for the movie shows some of the group from a distance.] From this perspective, The Dark is a far more insecure version of The #Sandman. Insomnia is a lighter version of Destruction in Gaiman’s works. Sweet Dreams is a different aspect of The Sandman. Unexplained Noises is a little freaky, so perhaps she corresponds to Delirium. There is even a character, Sleep, who could be considered a stand-in for Death in “Sandman”. Sleep is a natural and unavoidable end to the day just as Death is a natural and unavoidable end to life. Without significant spoilers, “Orion and the Dark” ends on a nice note related to family and connections across decades. #coderfilms To see a larger version of the movie poster, in most browsers, right-click on the thumbnail and select Open in New Window. Then resize the new window.