#2 on the all-time-best top 50 independent flicks *****

This is a movie that is hard to categorize. On the face of it, it's a high school movie, about the intelligent kid who feels alienated, about awkward teenage romance, bullies, etc.

But that's just the tiniest bit of the surface.

A layer deeper is the skull-faced, six-foot-tall bunny rabbit waking you up and leading you on walks in the middle of the night, telling you to commit awful acts, and telling you exactly when the world is going to end (28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds), and what you have to do in order to save all the ones you love from this great danger...

Then, there's time travel, the sovereignty of God, and how that relates to time travel, personal responsibility, and how the tiniest decision can have the most gigantic and devastating effects on the people closest to you.

At this point, you wouldn't be blamed for feeling that this movie has too many plots, too many thematic elements, that it's too ambitious.

But you'd be wrong.

This movie is way way WAY too intelligent, challenging, and thought-provoking for the ordinary movie-goer. This movie encourages thought and introspection, instead of spoon-feeding easy and trite answers.

Although it was a spectacular FLOP at the box office (right at $600,000 in the WHOLE USA), it has since become a rather big hit across the pond, and now is a genuine underground cult classic here in the USA.

This is a fantastic movie in which everything means something, everything ties together, and it needs to be seen at least 5 times. It also stands up to repeat viewings because there are NO flick flubs, no continuity mix-ups, and therefore, you can watch it many, many times, and get something new each time, because this is not one of those movies that works the first time only...it all agrees with itself, and stands up to intense scrutiny. Unbelievably, it is the first work of director Richard Kelly, who was 26 at the time of the production. UN-FREAKING-BELIEVABLE! It's made all the more believable, and easier to suspend your disbelief, by the fact that this is the first BIG role for almost all of the actors in the movie, including Jake Gyllenhall, AND his real-life sister, Maggie, who plays his sister in the movie. The actors aren't thoroughly typecast, so it is much more easy to believe and enjoy the movie.

This movie will trouble you, make you really chew on it, creep you out, and THOROUGHLY entertain you, beginning to end, top to bottom. If you find that you cannot figure out the movie, go to the special features, go to the book "The Philosophy Of Time Travel", and read it. This will solve the mystery for you, or you can read the essays found when searching for "Donnie Darko Meaning" (Google that), and you can blend them together for a good idea of the point of the movie. OR, you can just watch it about a dozen times. It's really THAT GOOD. NO JOKE. Get it. Watch it. It'll really deliver the goods. I cannot be emphatic enough.

On a scale of 1 to 10, it certainly is a 9.7, without a doubt.

Makes You Feel Surreal. Darko Family is Disturbed?

Donnie Darko, to say the least, is mind boggling. I somewhat wonder where all this dark energy stems from. Frankly, the culmination of various writers, directors, and producers all having this introspective outlook on life helps them speak miles away from normal thought processes, which they happen to want and catch by putting it down in some sort of satirical film. This film seems to allude the mundane thinkers and screams out to please understand this film the way that I wish you could.

Donnie (Jake Gyllenhall) is truly a disturbed individual in this film who is trying to get through life with a big secret. He seems to get stuck right at the reality part of life. Living in an affluent suburb with money doesn't seem to have helped Donnie's coping skills. He becomes very angry and aggressive at the dinner table and gets into a cussing contest with his sister. Nothing seems more disturbing to me than to see this going own under the parents household and it seems that the anger and rebellion has no bounds. Donnie even calls his mother a "B" after shutting the door and walking out of his room.

We seldom if ever realize whether Donnie's hallucinations are from schizophrenia, sleep walking, time travelers, or just plain inner fantasy. Donnie seems to not have a grip on his medications or his sleep patterns.

We soon also find out that the Middlesex High School seems to be teaming with students more messed up than he is. Perhaps, as a particular spin-off on tripping on LSD or something, we almost have to assume that Donnie feels just as alienated at school as he does at home.

Drew Barrymore co-produced this film, and knowing her talent and lifelong experiences, seems to play a large role with the full scope of this film. Drew plays a high school English Literature teacher at Middlesex who seems to be caught up in the same zany mind-games as everyone else brought about at the hands of ultra-conservative people that want to push pure guru love down your throat at same time they are working on breeding tremendous resentment and fear back into you by being super judgmental. I think that Patrick Swayze's character Jim Cunningham (The Love Guru) represents the forces of good (supposedly) trying to shape the minds of the ignorant, yet obviously, our character Donnie Darko had other thoughts on the subject and was seen here as a savior by his classmates as he unearths Jim's hypocritical nature when he sets his house on fire.

Donnie sees stuff others don't see, such as a sick looking creature dressed up in a bunny suite that talks to him and tells him the world is going to come to an end in roughly 28 days. Directly after his first encounter with the bunny-spaceman, later that night, an engine from a Jet-Liner crashes into his bedroom ceiling almost surely to have killed him if he had actually been there. Donnie is later found sleeping on the golf-course the next morning.

Donnie becomes hypnotized by his therapist and exhibits some very zany thought patterns under hypnosis.

Donnie also sees people's aura flowing forward from the chest into other rooms
insinuating that he can see the future flow of energy forward in time.

I shouldn't really give the ending away, but let me just tell you this is not your average psychological or sci-fi thriller. This has the taste of drama with a twist of a paranoid delusional mystery, mixed with a dash of suspense.

Great acting from just about everyone here. I'll give this 4/5 for it's feel.

So What is it Like Having a Whacko For a Son????

This is a movie filled with ambiguity, emotion and often confusion. Donnie Darko is set in the late 1980's when the director/writer, Richard Kelly grew up as a teenager. It is not a thriller nor a horror movie, it is a movie about angst, growing up, what if's and life. There are no action sequences, nor is there any real gore, violence or sex. The director's cut is an ambiguous movie that drops you hints as to what the writer is trying to convey in the story line, and the original version is a movie that is completely ambiguous and leaves you to theorize and create what you wish.

Donnie Darko is a troubled teen that sleepwalks, we learn this from the first scene in the movie. If you watch closely you learn alot from that very first scene *hint - the red car that Donnie peddles past is very symbolic*. Donnie is on medication (or is he?) and has a imaginary friend (or is he?) Frank the Bunny. The whole basis of the movie then begins when Donnie follows Frank one night and a jet engine of unknown origin crashes through Donnie's house, and lands on Donnie's bed. Frank the Bunny then alerts Donnie to the fact that the world will end in less than a month and the movie really starts.

Frank then leads Donnie down a road of questions and acts that continue through the movie, leaving you to wonder what is real and what isn't. A perfect blend of phsycological mystery, humor, family drama, and sci fi that is so engrossing to watch that you don't even want to sip a soda and miss a frame.

You will in fact wonder what and why things are happening, what is all of this about tangent universes, the manipulated living and manipulated dead, but don't become too disheartened. This movie may click the first time, and most likely will the second time viewing. The director's cut is more storytelling by the writer as to what he wanted Donnie Darko to be compared to the original. Is the boy a schitzophrenic? Is there time travel? Is there manipulation of destiny by God, yet choices left free for man? These questions and more will be answered in this brilliantly shot and cast movie. A cult classic for sure, and imaginative and brilliant movie, no doubt.