Director: Richard Kelly
Writer: Richard Kelly
Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell
Synopsis: After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a man in a large rabbit suit who manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.
When Donnie Darko hit cinema screens in 2001, it didn’t exactly explode onto the scene. Its original release was relatively quiet, but somewhere along the way Richard Kelly’s strange, unsettling film found its audience and was transformed into one of the defining cult movies of its generation. Twenty-five years later, the image of a terrifying man-sized rabbit remains instantly recognizable. And, come Halloween, you can still spot plenty of people dressing up as Frank. That says quite a lot about the staying power of a film that initially seemed destined to become a curious footnote.
I watch Donnie Darko every Halloween, and it is not because of the freaky rabbit. Although, admittedly, Frank is a pretty good reason. It’s the film’s dark ambience that pulls me straight back in. It feels cold, strange, and slightly detached from reality, even when Donnie is simply walking through an ordinary suburban neighborhood. Kelly takes familiar teenage life, from school, parents, parties, friendships, to the idea of first love, and gives it an underlying sense that something is very, very wrong.
Jake Gyllenhaal is brilliant in this film, balancing teenage awkwardness, anger, intelligence, and vulnerability without making the character feel stereotypical. This was one of the roles that helped put him firmly on the map, and looking back at his career now, it is fascinating to see the early signs of the actor he would become. From Brokeback Mountain and Zodiac to Nightcrawler and Prisoners, Gyllenhaal has repeatedly gravitated towards complicated characters, and Donnie feels like an early glimpse of that particular choice.
There is also something rather lovely about seeing Gyllenhaal alongside his real-life sister, Maggie Gyllenhaal, who plays Donnie’s older sister, Elizabeth. Maggie has since also built an impressive career both in front of and behind the camera, making their appearance together here feel like a fascinating little piece of film history.
And when you look back, it’s a star-studded cast. Jena Malone brings warmth and vulnerability to Gretchen, while Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, and Mary McDonnell all add something different to this increasingly bizarre suburban world. Swayze, in particular, is a lot of fun because the film allows him to play against the more familiar image of the charming leading man.
The story is deliberately difficult to pin down. Time travel, alternate realities, visions, fate, teenage angst, religion, and the end of the world are all thrown into the same pot. It should be a complete mess, and occasionally it does become a little too pleased with its mystery. But those cryptic notes allow for audiences to have multiple interpretations. Even after multiple watches, when Frank appears on screen, I’m always wondering what on Earth is going on. The still of the three of them in the cinema is still chilling to look at.
The film’s atmosphere, soundtrack, and strange collection of characters create a world that feels both nostalgic and unsettling. It captures that teenage feeling of knowing that something about the adult world doesn’t quite make sense, without having the vocabulary to explain why. And that is why Donnie Darko remains a Halloween favorite for me. It has the acting, the atmosphere and, most importantly, an original storyline that still feels difficult to replicate. It is eerie, yet funny, in some wonderfully unexpected places and mysterious enough that you might come back to watch again and again.
If Donnie Darko is your kind of strange, I’d follow it with The Butterfly Effect for its fractured approach to time and consequence, The Machinist for its psychological unease, Enemy for its unsettling mystery, and The Box if you want to explore more of Richard Kelly’s fascination with strange moral and supernatural dilemmas.
