DreamWorks Animation’s newest characteristic, “Orion and the Darkish,” is all however assured to shock you. It’s skipping theaters and going straight to Netflix, for starters. On a narrative stage, it reveals the little-known reality that each time people go to sleep, they’re being bludgeoned or smothered into unconsciousness by a bit blue gremlin. However the greatest shock would be the title that seems on the screenplay.

An adult-friendly youngsters film about coping with your anxieties — at first, concern of the darkish — the computer-animated characteristic was written by Charlie Kaufman, the mind behind “Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts” and “Adaptation.” The venture is itself a miles-outside-the-box adaptation of an ingenious and pretty simple image guide by Emma Yarlett, which Kaufman complicates as solely a galaxy mind like his can.

Taking a web page from Pete Docter over at Pixar, Kaufman has hatched a inventive (if regularly cumbersome) answer for the legions of youngsters who’ve gone to mattress worrying about no matter monsters may be lurking within the scariest nook of their bedrooms. As an alternative of the Boogeyman or the Babadook, out steps Darkish himself, a barely insecure however all-around benevolent factor with googly eyes and a disarmingly shiny Cheshire Cat smile.

“I simply want individuals would give me an opportunity,” Darkish confides in Orion, sounding just like the friendliest doable model of a bulldozer backing over gravel (courtesy of Paul Walter Hauser’s voice work). Wearing an outsized plague cloak that may stretch the width of the planet as wanted, this anthropomorphic fellow appears prepared to danger his very existence to elucidate how the entire darkish/gentle, evening/day factor works (with the assistance of a brief filmstrip visitor narrated by Werner Herzog). Taking it a step additional, Darkish figures that by inviting the child to tag alongside for twenty-four hours, perhaps Orion will be capable to fall sleep with out a lot screaming sooner or later.

In observe, that high-concept technique performs like a cross between Docter’s “Inside Out” and Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” however with Kaufman’s signature neuroses woven all through. The factor is, Orion doesn’t sound like a fifth grader in any respect. Positive, he introduces himself as “a child, similar to you,” however from the opening voiceover, it’s apparent that Orion is saddled with so many fears — from killer bees to carcinogenic cellphone waves to “gutter clowns” — that he’s the creation of a screenwriter with a long time of remedy below his belt. (Identify one other 10-year-old who’d say, “Appears like a visitors accident ready to occur. I ought to know. I’ve studied the actuarial charts.”)

Most of Orion’s anxieties hint again to a concern of humiliation. He’s afraid to danger something — particularly speaking to a pleasant feminine classmate — for concern of being laughed at or rejected. Kaufman’s sensible to start out from such a relatable place, one that children acknowledge and fogeys can simply bear in mind. However he pushes it to such a level that Orion’s lack of ability to have interaction with the world appears crippling sufficient to require skilled assist, somewhat than only a cute caricature of our personal childhood issues.

Orion tells us that the college counselor urged he catalog his fears in a sketchbook, and people coloured pencil drawings enable for playfully crude line boil animation vignettes amid the extra standard bobble-headed CG aesthetic director Sean Charmatz chooses for many of the film (a much less attention-grabbing look harking back to “Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius”). When he needs to take us inside Orion’s unconscious, colored-pencil doodles do the work.

You recognize what would have been superb? One thing extra in step with the watercolor illustrations in Yarlett’s guide. Charmatz ought to have pushed for a extra expressionistic model, of the kind that “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” and “Into the Spider-Verse” have made doable. Alas, this DreamWorks manufacturing appears extra enamored of Pixar, proper all the way down to the humorous however solely pointless “Night time Entities,” color-coded whatsits clearly modeled after the feelings in “Inside Out.”

If the aim was to make nighttime much less scary for teenagers, Kaufman may’ve provided a extra intuitive means of explaining the way it works than the 5 phosphorescent mates that accompany Darkish as he circles the earth. There’s the blue, Muppet-looking Sleep (Natasia Demetriou), whose techniques for inducing slumber border on legal, whereas glowing inexperienced Insomnia (Nat Faxon) terrorizes others into staying awake. Yellow tin-man sort Unexplained Noises (Golda Rosheuvel) makes a racket, whereas tiny mouse-lemur-like Quiet (Aparna Nancherla) absorbs automobile alarms and different distractions. As soon as they’ve all accomplished their jobs, Candy Desires (Angela Bassett) stops by to set off the exhibits that unspool in everybody’s heads.

Whereas all 5 embody issues we affiliate with the darkish, it feels by-product to deal with them as characters — workers, actually, who up and resolve to stop after Orion tells them why issues are so significantly better within the Gentle (one other entity personified, this one as a shiny yellow surfer dude in sun shades, voiced by Ike Barinholtz). As if Kaufman hadn’t convoluted the binary ideas of sunshine and darkish, day and evening sufficient, he interrupts this comedic fable on the 17-minute mark to disclose that all the pieces we’ve seen till this level has been a bedtime story informed by grownup Orion to his daughter, Hypatia (Mia Akemi Brown), who will later be a part of him in making an attempt to determine the way it ends.

Kaufman’s improvements all make “Orion and the Darkish” much less predictable, probably partaking younger viewers within the storytelling course of. However in addition they make for a extra irritating expertise total, as if Orion wasn’t high-strung sufficient already. What most likely would have labored higher was a mellower primary character and a extra dynamic actor to play Darkish (say, a comic, à la Robin Williams in “Aladdin”).

That’s to not say the Kaufman sensibility is unwelcome. It simply feels extra suffocating right here than it did in “Anomalisa.” Lots of people assume that overtly grownup stop-motion venture was Kaufman’s first foray into animation, when in reality, his connection to DreamWorks goes again farther. Kaufman did an uncredited rewrite on “Kung Fu Panda 2.” Years later, Yarlett’s nyctophobic image guide gave his creativeness room to run wild. An excessive amount of room. The medium’s versatile sufficient to observe, however a less complicated mannequin would’ve made a giant distinction — like evening and day.