After being bugged by my friends ad nauseam to watch this movie, I finally rented it the other night, and so far I’ve watched it twice, and I still haven’t unraveled the whole thing. It’s that good.
Basically, it’s an odd combination of American Beauty, Magnolia and 12 Monkeys. Yes, you read that right. It uses approaches from several different genres, but doesn’t neatly fit in any.
Donnie Darko is a troubled (possibly schizophrenic) teenager attending an upper-class Catholic school in upscale Fairfax. He comes from a nice Republican nuclear family. He’s in therapy. See where this is going? No, you don’t.
One night, Donnie is woken by the apparition of a shadowy character who resembles a death’s-head bunny rabbit. The rabbit informs him that the world will end in 28 days. While this is happening, a jet engine falls out of the sky and lands on Donnie’s house, falling directly into the bedroom where he should have been sleeping. Continued...