Co-written by Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation”), the guru of 21st century postmodern cinema, and Lloyd Taylor of the acclaimed 2023 animated film “Nimona,” and based on the 2014 children’s book by English author and illustrator Emma Yarlett, the computer-generated animated film “Orion and the Dark” is a bit of a mixed bag.

Directed by Sean Charmatz, making his solo feature debut, the film tells the derivative story of an 11-year-old boy named Orion (a very good Jacob Tremblay), who is afraid of the dark, and of everything else, apparently. Orion, a nice, slightly caricatured boy with a mop of curly brown hair, is afraid of rejection and humiliation, which makes it impossible for him to speak to Sally, the girl of his preadolescent dreams. He is afraid of the school toilet backing up and a schoolyard bully named Richie Panici (Jack Fisher), who calls him, accurately, if not kindly, “Cryin’ Orion.” Oddly enough, no one asks Orion about his distinctive, astronomical name.

The school has a field trip to a planetarium planned. Orion has hidden the permission slip, although his mother (Carla Gugino) has found it and encourages him to go, even though she and her husband (Matt Dellapina) know about his phobias, they try to help him overcome them. They tell him that he, “cannot allow fear to to rule his life.”

Scenes of Orion in his room, worrying about all the things that might happen, especially what lurks behind a pair of louvered doors, strongly recall the 1982 Tobe Hooper-directed, Steven Spielberg production “Poltergeist.” In fact, “Orion and the Dark” borrows too much from this predecessor.

One evening, Orion, who has a flashlight at his bedside, is visited by the spirit of the Dark. Aptly, the apparition is decked out like the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come from Charles Dickens’ classic “A Christmas Carol” in a long. black robe with a hood.  We can only see a pair of eyes and a mouthful of white teeth when “Dark” (Paul Walter Hauser) speaks. He tries to befriend Orion by taking the boy on a 24-hour journey across the world to demonstrate the important purpose of darkness in the scheme of things. Orion meets several “entities:” Sleep (Natasia Demetriou), who resembles a Muppet and sounds like she’s from Eastern Europe, a mosquito-like Insomnia (Nat Faxon), who whispers disturbing things into the ears of sleepers, the barely audible, anime-like creature Quiet (Aparna Nancherla), and the noisy broken robot Unexplained Noises (Golda Rosheuvel, “Lady Macbeth”). Voicing the entity Sweet Dreams is none other than the great Angela Bassett, although her greatness is muted. We also meet a vainglorious Light (Ike Barinholtz). My personal favorite part of “Orion and the Dark” is that film’s narrator is legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog.

Anthropomorphism, the art of attributing human traits to non-human things, has been around for a long time. Without it, Disney would not exist. But it’s easy to cross a line and overdo it. It’s also possible to overdo the use of the music of Tame Impala. The same goes for The Flaming Lips. Before you know it, it’s time for a Kaufman-esque meta mind-switch, and a grown-up Orion (Colin Hanks) is telling the story of Orion and the Dark to his daughter Hypatia (Mia Akemi Brown), and she even projects herself into the story to help Orion. At this point, I took a step back and never got back into the Orion-verse. It’s cute enough. But there is such a thing as too much.

(“Orion and the Dark” contains children in peril and other scary content)

“Orion and the Dark”

Not Rated. On Netflix

Grade: B

From left, Insomnia, voiced by Nat Faxon, Quiet, voiced by Aparna Nancherla, Dreams, voiced by Angela Bassett, Sleep, voiced by Natasia Demetriou, and Unexplained Voices, voiced by Golda Rosheuvel, in a scene from “Orion and the Dark.” (DreamWorks Animation/Netflix via AP)