An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was written by Charlie Kaufman and since it had received some solid reviews, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, to be honest, I thought the damned thing was rather disappointing after all. I mean, the concept really had some potential, I wouldn’t expect less from Kaufman, and it was really neat to see a family feature which actually had some ambition and which wasn’t completely condescending towards children. Indeed, the whole idea of a kid completely crippled by anxiety (something terribly relatable for most of us) becoming friend with Dark himself was really cool. The fact that Dark himself was full of complexes as well, even if it was fairly predictable, was a nice angle. However, even though these foundations were really solid, the whole thing just drifted in quick sand fairly quickly after these two solid characters met. Indeed, they gave us a whole system/mythology involving other entities of the night but it made the whole thing even more convoluted when it should have been a simple children tale and, above all, these extra characters were all barely entertaining. Even more problematic was the fact that, suddenly, you find out that Orion has actually become a grown-up who’s telling this story to his own daughter who happened to be also scared of the dark. Seriously, this new approach really came out of nowhere after maybe 30 mins of running time and it made the whole thing even more convoluted than it already was. Sure, I can imagine that it was supposed to be endearing but it actually severely undermined the impact of this story. Basically, if it’s only a bedtime story, who cares what might happen after all? Eventually, since anything could happen at any moment, basically, nothing really mattered after all. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t really work for me, I guess it is still worth a look but there is no doubt that it could have been so much better though. 

6/10