Can anybody help me with Kelly's mess??

Rating: Null/10 (18 July 2002)

> !!!!THIS MESSAGE IS LOADED WITH SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE DO NOT READ FURTHER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The murdered kid Frank is a ghost from beyond the grave who (through God's divine power? or somehow) comes back in time to change his course of events to warn Donnie so that Donnie cannot be crushed by the engine; Donnie lives and he is commanded to do things by Frank's dead ghost which inevitably lead him to kill Frank (to create his eye-less spirit?) and Donnie will inevitably go on to create a time portal on a plane engine causing it to fall into the past and land in his home where he will be sleeping and this time the rabbit will not warn him because Donnie stays there and gets crushed therby altering the future so he does not exist to murder this Frank guy so his ghost can't come back to make him sleep on the golf course and live?
OK again...Consider this: As the time machine (plane engine) travels backward in time we see a sequence where events transpire backward at a great speed and everything up to the point where the time travel craft arrives is undone (like in Superman -- essentially time goes backward). Donnie is not visited by the bunny, instead he laughs (because of newfound revelation in an existence he has not experienced yet?) and is crushed by the engine thereby dying and not causing his girl's death?? Two things I can try to conjecture from seeing this backward sequence:
1. time travel erases the universe up that point (Superman I)
or
2. the backward sequence is merely shown from the engine's point of view (nothing in that future is really changed -- I mean how can that future change if those exact ordering of events as directed by Frank is necessary to cause the engine to time travel back?)
Assuming 1. implies that Frank can't be killed since Donnie is not there to shoot him so Frank cannot come back to warn him in his sleep so the reality he creates is the one at the end of the movie where Donnie is crushed and his girl lives??? But since this becomes the correct flow of things (remember time was erased backward up to the engine's arrival), how can Donnie live on to cause the engine to come back and fall on himself if he is dead and crushed? So the time travelling engine can only exist if there is a flow of event where Donnie doesn't get crushed. So this would imply time cannot reverse itself; it would undo the possibility of the engine coming back to create the normal (Donnie gets crushed) flow of time. A paradox.
OK, I admit 1. was silly to assume in the first place now lets Assume 2. Then we have an excuse for the "Donnie doesn't get killed, Frank gets shot" universe to exist. Now we have the criteria for Frank to come back and warn Donnie. But this would put him in an endless self-perpetuating time circle where the bunny always warns him each time and Donnie always does the same thing each time? Even assuming there was a point in this endless cycle where Frank doesn't get shot and Donnie can be crushed now we must accept that both universes must exist simultaneously. Even worse, if you really think about it we have really have three possibilities: a) Donnie gets warned by Frank b) Donnie doesn't get warned and is crushed. c) The engine does not fall in his home. Since Donnie is crushed in (b) he cannot live to cause the engine to travel back so the engine never falls in his house. There are probably even more possibilities. So inevitably we fall into this discussion of alternate universes. If we scrap the alternate universe concept and take on the pre-destination model (only one reality can exist), there is no way to organize any combination a,b and c in a continuous flow of events to create this so-called God's pre-ordained timeline. Try it yourself....go on.
I understand the concept of time travel leads to paradoxical conclusions (alternate realities, changing the future so the future can't exist to time travel back and create its own existence, and whatever) but will someone please tell me what is the point of Kelly's "puzzle"?
Other than grappling with Kelly's diahretic time travel concept, I found this movie to be a complete waste of time trying to carry itself with 80's nostalgia (Kelly was born in 1975 -- go figure) and weak self-intelligent assumptions. The smurf discussion was funny but you can't carry a movie on it.