See "Jacob's Ladder"

Rating: Null/10 (6 March 2003)

SPOILER ALERT I've checked around about this movie and apparently people are really confused as to what it means. It didn't really hit me until my fiance rented "Jacob's Ladder" for the umpteenth time. I don't want to ruin the movie for anyone who hasn't seen "Donnie Darko" but the film isn't really about time travel per se; it's about "what if" a person lived thirty days after his death. Given the time period in which the film is set (the social wasteland known as suburban VA in 1988 -- I was in middle school in suburban VA at the time), Donnie's life beyond the date of his death wouldn't have been a picnic. While "Jacob's Ladder" deals with the idea of letting go of the people and things a person loved on earth in order to find peace in death, "Donnie Darko" offers a much darker message -- that a sudden death for Donnie was far kinder than if he had actually continued to live in the world he knew. Girls whose mothers violently murdered their fathers, sleazy motivational speakers who were supposed to be role models for young people, Duran Duran, psychiatrists and bull****. Donnie was better off not living. Because of his inability to conform to the society he was born into, he would have ultimately destroyed everything he loved (or could have loved) on this earth. His sudden death was his was of making peace with everything he loved on earth.