When Pandora Cinema released \Donnie Darko"" in 2001, the only thing more unexpectedly disturbing than the film's puzzling ending was its miserable box office performance.
The reasons for ""Darko's"" failure are unclear. It featured certified stars like Drew Barrymore and an up-and-coming Jake Gyllenhaal. Then again, maybe audiences weren't up for seeing a film that begins and ends with an airplane crash or one that stars a six-foot tall, demonic bunny named Frank. In the end, maybe ""Darko"" was just too damn weird and linearly challenged for most viewers, many of whom certainly must have staggered dazed out of cinemaplexes, wondering what they had just witnessed.
Commercial flops, however, have a way of garnering cult followings, and as ""Donnie Darko"" struck a cord with alienated, misunderstood youth across the country, it achieved just that. So loud were the rumblings from the fringes, that eventually the production company realized they may have been on to something. Thus, the production company just gave ""Donnie Darko"" a risky re-release in theaters in an expanded ""Director's Cut"" edition. This edition features about 20 minutes of probably unnecessary but certainly enjoyable additional footage. If you missed it the first time around, are willing accept a tripped-out ending and want to see what all the fuss is about, now is perhaps the best time to experience director Richard Kelly's rare feat-a truly bizarre yet surely entertaining film.
If you've not spent the last eight hours lying on your bed pondering the existence or non-existence of God, the hypocrisy of society, or listening to Joy Division's Closer on repeat, there is a chance, however slim, that you are well versed in ""Donnie Darko."" If that's the case, here are the basics of the plot:
A high-school age, white male named, of all things, Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) lives in the late '80s and feels the pangs of alienation. He has trouble talking to people, the school faculty is outlandishly conservative, and his parents send him to therapy, doping him on heavy regimens of anti-psychotics. Nothing too ground breaking.
But to complicate-and significantly twist-this nearly clich??d plot, Darko is also schizophrenic, suffers from frightening delusions and believes the world is coming to an end within the month because a six-foot evil bunny rabbit named Frank tells him so. Frank commands Darko to perform destructive acts against his school and other facets of the establishment, and he does because he's worried about angering the large, demonic bunny, because then Frank might leave him. At its core, the movie is about pangs of loneliness and the search for those who understand your problems, helping to ground the more bizarre plot points in human empathy.
But dismissing the film as mere celebration of alienation would be ignoring most of its truly unusual and disturbingly satisfying pleasures. ""Donnie Darko,"" a film about an outsider of a boy, which is not an unusual film topic, is rendered unique by the film's genuinely offbeat and twisted aesthetic. Many movies strive for this territory of the challenging, surreal and unique; but unless it's made by David Lynch, many films fall short of this goal. ""Darko"" is the rare film that achieves its own unique level of weird and watchable, and for that reason alone, is worth the eight dollars to see it in theaters.
Indeed, there is truly nothing comparable to Frank, the evil six-foot rabbit. True, Harvey was an imaginary six-foot rabbit but his face wasn't twisted into a metallic black mess and he didn't sport a hilariously unconvincing rabbit costume. And in that movie Jimmy Stewart didn't try to knife his reflection in the eye. Donnie Darko does, and as he pushes his knife deeper into a bathroom mirror, and deeper into Frank's eye, the look of grim ecstasy on his face is unforgettable. Ultimately, it is the strange relationship between Frank and Darko that make this movie linger in the mind.
The words of doom and loneliness that Darko and Frank exchange during Darko's delusional interludes make the characters less stereotypical. During these exchanges, Darko's mental illness seems painfully real and confusing-we come to see him as a normal person whose mind forces him to endure an unusually bizarre hell. This makes Donnie Darko an interesting and powerful character in any order, and ""Donnie Darko"" a uniquely worthwhile film.
