"if you feel the need to vomit up there, just swallow it." "okay, mommy."

Rating: 9/10 (19 October 2007)

A paranoid schizophrenic fails to save his girlfriend, and possibly all of humanity, by murdering a giant bunny rabbit. So he finds religion and goes back in time to kill himself, which does the trick. Only the bunny rabbit's ghost has tricked him into killing himself before he kills the bunny who kills his girlfriend. And he's not really schizophrenic, maybe. No, wait.
My favorite movie about teenagers and family, the creepiest exploration of mental health management since CUCKOO'S NEST, definitely the best recorded use of Patrick Swayze: DONNIE DARKO is all these things, though it spends little time on these elements, because primarily it is a very smart thriller. The mystery is compelling and scary, and that journey is worth taking for its own merits. But this movie is much more, because it touches with the illuminating finger of God the years between carelessness and responsibility.
The thriller part of the story is told through the filter of a crazy person, a nice allegory for the teenage condition - we don't really understand what we're seeing, a lot of the time. Why does a Halloween mask whisper doom from the mirror? Why do we keep waking up in strange places? What's with the jet engine in our bedroom? These scenes of disorientation are juxtaposed with a hundred moments of great reassurance and normalcy - Holmes Osborne and Mary McDonnell are the truest screen parents in a long time; 80s pop conjures an ironically simpler period of American history; Swayze and Beth Grant are comfortingly familiar bogeymen. The contrast of order and chaos allows both elements to stand delineated.
It is a great help that Richard Kelly is apparently very good with actors. The performances are among the most poignant in any of these fine actors' careers. There's more, though. There's thoughtfulness at every level. It's idiosyncratic in the most exciting way. Direction neatly supports script, such that nearly every choice works. I think the visible boom mike in Swayze's video is a little much, as is Beth Grant's mistaking Graham Greene for Lorne. These moments break the truth of the world for cheap comic effect. But Kelly was still very young, and besides, he makes sure that every other piece of dialogue, every cut, every music cue, reinforces theme and propels story while expanding the moment. The talent show is a feat of theme engineering-as-character development - the fat girl's recital nearly, but not quite, transcends her inherent awkwardness. The disapproving teacher can't help tapping her feet to the music. Teenagers leap in approbation of younger girls' precocious sexuality.
There is real hell here, hell on earth. Your harmless 10 year old sister is trained into a prancing, haughty little bitch. Your girlfriend's stepdad stabbed her mom and is still running around loose. You're going insane, and the best intentions of the nicest people you know are worse than useless. That's real life. It's bad enough without the bunny. I wouldn't be 16 again, even if I could be 16 again.