A kids movie written by Charlie Kaufman.

It sounds like an oxymoron, but it's actually the top-line for the latest Dreamworks/Netflix collaboration, Orion and The Dark.

Yes, the man responsible for emotional breakdowns (read: films) like Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and I'm Thinking of Ending Things is trying his hand at the kids market.

And it works… kind of.

Eleven-year-old Orion (Jacob Tremblay) is afraid of everything: bees; dogs; the ocean; clogging the toilet and flooding the school.

Orion's fears balloon out into roughly illustrated cut scenes (a nod to the film's storybook source material) that always devolve into him meeting his untimely death.

His constant catastrophising leads him to spurt lines including, "Fun is just a word people made up to make danger more appealing."

Just in case the CGI monsters led you to forget, Charlie Kaufman is writing this dialogue.

But if there's one thing that Orion is fearful of more than anything, it's the dark. So, it's bad luck for him when the physical manifestation of darkness enters his room one night.

Enlivened by a gruff-voiced Paul Walter Hauser (fresh off winning an Emmy for portraying another kind of darkness in Black Bird), Dark is deeply insecure about all the people that despise him globally, and Orion is his number one hater (he's keeping a list).

Desperate to prove to someone (anyone) that he's not a bad guy, Dark takes Orion on a transatlantic adventure so he can see that darkness is pretty cool. At least compared to that show off Chad, Light (voiced by Ike Barinholtz).

Along the way, Dark introduces Orion to the others in his rag-tag gang of 'night entities'.

There's Sleep, a fuzzy blue dumpling voiced by Natasia Demetriou, pulling out her vampiric accent from What We Do in the Shadows. Quiet (Aparna Nancherla): a tiny, white puffball that literally eats the night's most errant and annoying sounds. Robotic (or maybe just British) Unexplained Noises (Golda Rosheuvel) is the literal bump in the night. Insomnia (Nat Faxon) is the little green bug that reminds you of that 10-year-old embarrassment just as you're about to slip into sleep.

Rounding them all out is Sweet Dreams, a resplendent ball of light that could only be voiced by Oscar winner Angela Bassett.

The group spend their endless existence (catch the excellent Werner Herzog cameo when Dark is explaining just how old he is) circling the globe bringing night, its wonders (fireworks, luminous jellyfish, drive-in movies) and its terrors (scary sounds, nightmares) to the world.

But this is no simple, celestial ride-along. Halfway through, Kaufman reveals that Orion and Dark's journey is a bedtime story told by an older Orion (Colin Hanks) to his daughter Hypatia (Mia Akemi Brown) — or is it?

The film uses this meta-ness to poke fun at overly-simplistic kids films that end in big dance parties (coming from the studio with some of the most egregious dance party finales).

But it also uses it to go deeper on the concept of fear, the cliched advice to "just push through it" and the idea that there is value in the dark, beyond illustrating how sick the light is.

At least, I think that's what it's trying to convey.

Kaufman's dialogue is crackly, funny and whip-smart, but there's a lot of it. That, coupled with the dual timelines and crashing narratives, makes it difficult to pin down what is actually going on.

There's a period in the middle of the film, after another visit to the present-day Orion, where the narrative slackens. Character decisions are yada yada'd and the stakes are raised so rapidly that you don't even realise the world is burning (literally).

Eventually, it becomes clear the narrative tangle is all the means to a very touching end that proves you don't have to be sickly sweet to give a kids film a happy ending.

While the "think about it" approach might turn off those looking for butt jokes (there's one) and minions, it's very refreshing to see a children's movie push the boundaries of what it can be.

The visual look of the film is a hair off your slicker big-budget productions, but the 2D hand-drawn embellishments give backgrounds a charming feel. Plus, the character design and movement of the night entities more than makes up for the homemade feel (someone please let me buy a Quiet plush!)

For adult fans of Kaufman's work, Orion and the Dark is a great watch. Purely for the curiosity factor of seeing how the writer's love for neurotic characters, ominous portals and layered narratives feels in a G-rated setting.

For kids, it might just be a litmus test to see if their First Charlie Kaufman Film™ will lead to a lifelong love for his eclectic filmography or pleas to turn the movie off.

Orion and the Dark is streaming on Netflix.