The movie that set the bar for weird movies

Donnie Darko is a story about a highschool boy who doesn’t die when a jet engine crashes into his house. He was warned. He got a second chance. In the process, he got an imaginary friend/enemy/mentor/guide/psychotic break in the form of an anthropomorphic bunny. It was the bunny who got him out of the house in time, and it’s the bunny that tells him the world will end in 28 days.

As an aside, props to the people involved in getting this movie made and released. If Donnie Darko can get produced, there’s no such thing as “no market for this” or “too weird and thinky.”

On a mission to save the world, Donnie attempts to unravel the secrets of time travel by reading the helpfully-titled book, The Philosophy of Time Travel. In the course of his research, he comes to realize that HE is the one dooming the world. He got a reprieve; he’s a loose end that needs to be cleaned up.

But over the course of that month, Donnie falls in love, improves the lives of everyone around him (except for the predatory life coach, who he ruins, but that’s for the better, too). In short, Donnie Darko becomes a hero.

He’s also responsible for destroying the world.

It’s only once he realizes that his mysterious guide is a hallucination of some guy in a Halloween costume that he finally cracks and realizes he’s not a hero. There’s only one way to be a hero, and that’s to time-travel back to the beginning of the loop and crash a jet engine into his house with him still inside.

As far as time loop/travel movies go, Donnie Darko is an outlier in every sense. There’s no “escape” from the loop. He doesn’t get a magical ending. He doesn’t emerge a better person, though you could argue that becoming a good enough person allows him to sacrifice himself. Overall, however, the movie is short on lessons and growth moments and more about sorting through mental trauma to discover what really matters.

Donnie didn’t matter in his school or community. His “cheat” of death let him experience a little taste of being somebody, even if it was predestined never to last. In the final version, however, no one will remember him as anyone but that kid who died when a large chunk of machinery flattened his house.

Usually, fatalistic endings like that don’t make it to theaters.

I feel like most studios would have tacked on a little epilogue where he’s fine, even if it makes no sense. (We see the bunny costume, the mask lifts, it’s Donnie’s face, he wink and puts a finger to his lips *shush*, and pulls the mask back down… roll credits)