DONNIE DARKO

Donnie Darko is a recent oddity from first time director Richard Kelly. It’s a dark, slow and moody piece, not for impatient viewers. I liked it, but I wanna watch it again to get a better feel for it. Technically, it’s quite well done. The color and art direction are fab, and the acting is pretty decent across the board. But anyone expecting a gore-fest would do well to watch something else.
Set in the 1988 (the older daughter is voting for Dukakis!), with a like, totally 80s new wave soundtrack of Echo & The Bunnymen, Tears For Fears, etc., Donnie is a disturbed teen in therapy and on many meds, with a sleepwalking problem. He’ll wake up in some strange location and not know what he’s done. Dollars to donuts it ain’t no good, though. He’s being summoned by a guy named Frank in a scary rabbit/alien suit. At one point , Donnie asks him why he wears that stupid bunny suit, and he says “Why do you wear that stupid human suit?” A jet engine falls out of the sky and crashes into his family’s house and wrecks his room, but he was out on a nocturnal mission and lived. The FAA inspectors can’t figure out which plane it came from, and make his family sign a non-disclosure agreement. Apparently NO planes are missing engines.
Donnie gets a girlfriend. More weird things start to happen. The school is vandalized and flooded after one of Donnie’s missing time episodes. The town is enchanted by a self-help fear therapy guru played by Patrick Swayze. Soon everybody is brainwashed into his “Your negativity is caused by fear” B.S. Fear or love, everything results from one or another, according to him. Guess where your reaction comes from if you don’t side with him? There is an old crazy lady the kids call Grandma Death who stands in the road and repeatedly looks in her mailbox, but nothing ever comes. It turns out that she wrote a book, Philosophy of Time Travel, which explains Donnie’s hallucinations. He sees people’s ectoplasmic life forces, and force fields pop up in certain places. The big name stars are all good-Swayze as the guru, Noah Wylie and Executive Producer Drew Barrymore as teachers. I even liked the over-the-top Beth Grant as Kitty Farmer, wacko repressed teacher with a tightly pulled bun hairdo, who coaches the girl’s dance team. Nice line: “Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.”
Donnie and his girl go to see “The Evil Dead” (bonus points) on a double bill with The Last Temptation of Christ! She falls asleep, and Frank forces him to burn the guru’s house, resulting in finding his secret room full of kiddie porn! Things start to accelerate when Donnie’s parents (played by Mary McDonnell and Holmes Osborne) leave town. They throw a party at his house, his girlfriend gets run over, he shoots the Bunny, and…naw, I’ve given away way too much already. Watch the damn movie yourself if you wanna know what happens.
This flick has enough characters and ideas for several movies, and some of them could have been developed further, but who wants to watch a four-hour movie? It’s certainly not predictable, and I’d often rather see an interesting failure than a well made piece of crap. But it’s not a failure, just an odd and understated artistic jumble of weirdness. And often purposely funny. It’s not an FX-dependant film, but they are used to good effect. Donnie Darko is creepy but not gory, more unsettling than shocking. Definitely worth a second viewing, if you have patience.

-Hysteric Eric