Good acting and great premise fall prey to poor execution and resolution

Rating: 7/10 (20 February 2018)

I really enjoyed watching Donnie Darko and loved the topics it touched on, but the explanation behind why everything happens left me with a sour taste in my mouth. I did find it genuinely funny and thought the acting was good, particularly Gyllenhaal doing a phenomenal job as always. The premise and broad array of themes touched on, from teen social life to religion to sci-fi, were fun and well explored. However, while you feel like you're being led through a wild, mind-bending journey and are always intrigued to see how the pieces fit together, the answer is dissatisfying.
The given theory of the creation of a tangent universe in which there is some unnamed power that compels everyone in it to convince Donnie, who the TU is based around, to return the artifact seems ridiculous to me. There are also the manipulated dead in the TU, who also have all kinds of power, in addition to some powers Donnie supposedly has and can access when necessary. If there was some guiding force, that force could have just returned the artifact to where it came from and not manipulate the TU. Also, there is no explanation of how the artifact was created, or how Donnie accessed the wormhole in the end. Under the theory, the meaning of the world and everything that happened in the movie was just to return the artifact and get Donnie to be willing to kill himself, which seems meaningless and disappointing.
My personal theory on how it all works is quite different. I think Donnie was just schizophrenic and Frank was inspired by his sister's boyfriend, Frank, who had a bunny costume and entered Jake's mind as part of his subconscious. His subconscious, already troubled and inspired by the readings he did for class, convinces him to do violent things. As he learns about the physics of time travel, the countdown clock is when the wormhole will be when he decides to take advantage of the wormhole and go back in time. At the end he decides, after much contemplation, that he is alone and will die alone, and decides to go back in time and kill himself by letting the jet engine fall on him.
Regardless, I did find it extremely thought provoking and enjoyable, but the very questionable execution and follow through to the set up was disappointing to me.