Troubled teenager Donnie Darko is lured (sleepwalking) out of his home by the voice of a monstrous rabbit, named “Frank”, who tells Donnie the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. The next day, as Donnie returns home, he learns a jet engine has crashed into his bedroom; no one knows where it came from. Donnie begins to see a psychiatrist, who treats his visions of Frank as hallucinations, symptomatic of paranoid schizophrenia. Donnie returns to school where he is subject to inane, oversimplified philosophies by gym teacher Kitty and a motivational speaker, Jim Cunningham. Donnie finds refuge in a new girlfriend, Gretchen, and sympathetic teachers who teach Donnie philosophies on destruction and time. I’m not really sure how to land this plot synopsis, so I’ll just say a series of convoluted events culminate in a 28-day rewind in which Donnie is in his room as the jet engine crashes, killing him. As his family mourns, everyone touched by the ‘alternate’ series of events senses something has happened.
I’m going to be honest, “Donnie Darko” is one of those films that I immediately googled “Donnie Darko explained” as credits rolled. I didn’t get it. It ends up, there’s quite an accompaniment of books, marketing materials, and a director’s cut that further clarifies a story between two universes in which a Christ-like figure is steered towards his own sacrifice to save humanity. It makes for fascinating supplementary material, but I just don’t think the film got there on its own. At least for me, I didn’t fully understand the symbolism and in-universe logic, as depicted in the film (e.g. Donnie watches an apocalyptic vortex over his house. We then see a plane tear apart. Donnie now appears in his bed as the engine crashes in—we’re apparently supposed to understand that he chose to crash the plane on himself, 28 days earlier, to save the world, or something).
That’s not to say the film is meritless. Donnie is a sympathetic, Holden Caulfield-like character, calling out the inauthentic, phony adults around him. Frank the rabbit is sufficiently iconic and creepy, and the film is plenty mysterious. There’s also an excellent cast, my favorite character being the awful Kitty Farmer. Beth Grant’s delivery of “Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion” is seriously the best! But with high-science, art, and philosophy discussions, a plane crash immediately post 9/11, and an incoherent plot, the film is dark-fodder for young, budding critical thinkers to make sense of. Apparently, this film sits in a class with “Fight Club”, “Memento”, and “Requiem for a Dream” as the edgy, teen film combo of my generation. I both see and appreciate that, but “Darko” was probably my least favorite of the 4.