"How does it feel to have a wacko for a son?"

Rating: 8/10 (6 November 2017)

I've read more than a handful of reviews here on IMDb for this film, and it's interesting to see so many different interpretations, many that conflict with each other, but still making sense in their own way. I have to admit, I missed a lot of the picture's nuance watching it for the first time, so returned to it a day later to view it once more. One has to accept the time travel premise for the story to work because of the way Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) rewinds things all the way back to the day of the jet engine crash. What's a lot more complex are all the in-between steps that take place showing how Donnie connects with Frank Bunny and the way in which he deals with his paranoid schizophrenia.
I don't pretend to 'get' everything that went on in the story and I don't know if multiple repeat viewings would help clear things up. I think more exposure would only lead to more theories about what was going on in the mind of writer and first time director Richard Kelly when he put this movie together. There's some conjecture that Donnie was attempting to find a way to prevent the end of the world from taking place, but if you think about it, Frank's warning was essentially true for Donnie - his 'world' came to an end when he returned to his room near the end of the story.
There's something I'd like to mention in connection with the transparent, watery, balloon-like vision Donnie had emanating from people in his immediate orbit and from himself as well. Mystics and healers speak of a 'silver cord' that connects one's spirit to the physical body when one dreams or experiences astral projection. It's to keep a person's spirit safe on it's journey while separate from the body. That idea didn't come across in Donnie's experience so I wonder if that was something on Kelly's mind when he came up with the concept.
Over all I'm not quite sure what to make of this movie. Though it's kind of bizarre, I did like it enough to pursue it a second time and in due course I'll probably want to catch it a few more times. Some movies just manage to get under your skin and for me, this was one of them. My viewing of the film was of the original theatrical version, stated by some viewers here that it's the preferred one versus the director's cut. It couldn't hurt to try the alternate one down the road.