Mental Health Awareness

Rating: 8/10 (22 October 2018)

Richard Kelly does an amazing job in the use of special effects and camera manipulation in order to inflict emotion onto the audience. The scene where Donny is gazing into the mirror and the Bunny appear, creates a sense of darkness. His facial expression suggest that he flipped a switch in order to imitate the bunny. The use of parallel editing with him in the bathroom and the PTA meeting show a sense of unawareness. The parents along with the school board had no idea that their Donnie was seeing an imaginary friend nor the actions he committed. It stressed how sometimes we assume everyone's okay because they do not show that they need help from the exterior. The last scene is what really ties the whole movie together. The reverse motion of the movie suggest that time travel was possible. All the things that occurred if Donny was alive was erased because in this dimension he died. Throughout the whole movie, there was this repetition of dates and a countdown to this very moment. This ending struck a nerve in me because we connected with Donny and we saw how his disease effected the decisions he made. Mental illness is a huge problem and it's mostly hidden from the naked eye. The medication and counseling was supposed to help him but he still struggled with the voices. Another thing that stuck out to me was when the counselor asked Donny what Robert Sparrow said which was, "Everything in the world dies alone". It was hard to wrap my head around the phrase because when I think of death, I want to believe that your loved ones are there. But at the very moment, there might be a high possibility you might be alone. This connected back to Donnie because he was alone when he died.