Intriguing, Creepy, and Flawed

Rating: 7/10 (7 October 2013)

Donnie Darko is renowned for it's dark and sinister feel and themes, however, I oftentimes felt a sincere lack of these things while I was watching. The first half of the movie made me question why it had received so much cult hype over the years. It felt thrown together, messy, and confused. At times it seemed as if there were three separate plots sewn together, threaded by a director as confused as I was. As I loved watching Donnie's character develop and discover his delusions, I also found myself unusually annoyed at his lack of screen time. Instead, Kelly chose to focus on other, sloppier characters who served no purpose to the relationship between the creepy and interesting Frank and Donnie. Why should I care about the obese Chinese foreign student or the overly-stylized and annoying teacher/mom Ms. Kitty? The director was exploiting their unlike-ability for the sake of the audience enjoying Darko and his companions more. Throughout the first half of the film I yearned for more screen time for Donnie and his rabbitular illusion. The second half of Donnie Darko, however, was a completely different film. Kelly invests small bits and pieces of the actual plot into the first hour in order to prepare the audience for the second. I thoroughly enjoyed this section of the movie, and thought it mostly made up for the loose script and pointlessness of it's counterpart. Kelly and the audience spend more time with Donnie and the mysteriousness surrounding his visions. I began to realize why the movie was such a hit. I was fully immersed in the time-travel theme and began to connect with Donnie and his girlfriend Gretchen on a new level. The twist ending was predictable albeit clever. After some research into the events it seemed to me like the audience needed some if not loads of background knowledge of time travel philosophy to fully understand it's genius. This only serves to separate the viewer from the film. I think that is why people think of this movie as an instant classic- they simply didn't get it, and need to keep coming back in attempts to understand what they couldn't the last time. You would think that by the end of the film someone would given the audience some clues. So, while it was an interesting and thought-provoking ending, it was not all it could have or should have been.
A cult favorite, Donnie Darko has inspired countless movies of it's kind-movies that ultimately saw more purpose than Darko ever did. Jake Gyllenhaal shines as young Donnie and serves the dark theme of the film well. Kelly's script, however, falls short of producing more than a few good characters, dialogues, and plot-advancing scenes.