Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko is a 2001 American science fiction psychological thriller film written and directed by Richard Kelly in his directorial debut, and produced by Flower Films. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Mary McDonnell, Katharine Ross, Patrick Swayze and Noah Wyle, with Seth Rogen in his film debut. Set in October 1988, the film follows Donnie Darko (Gyllenhaal), a troubled teenager who inadvertently escapes a bizarre accident by sleepwalking. He has visions of Frank, a mysterious figure in a rabbit costume who informs him that the world will end in 28 days.

Development began in late 1997 when Kelly had graduated from film school and started writing scripts. He took an early idea of a jet engine falling onto a house with no one knowing its origin and built the story around it. Kelly insisted on directing the film himself and struggled to secure backing from producers until 2000, when Pandora Cinema and Barrymore's Flower Films agreed to produce it on a $4.5 million budget. Filming took 28 days in the summer of 2000, mostly in California. The soundtrack features a version of the Tears for Fears song, "Mad World" covered by American musicians Gary Jules and Michael Andrews, which went to number one on the UK Singles Chart for three weeks and was the Christmas number 1 in 2003.

Donnie Darko premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2001, followed by a limited theatrical release on October 26. Because the film's advertising featured a crashing plane and the September 11 attacks had occurred a month and a half before, it was scarcely advertised. This affected its box office performance and it grossed just $517,375 in its initial run. and after reissues, it went on to gross $7.5 million worldwide, and earned more than $10 million in US home video sales. It was listed No. 2 in Empires "50 Greatest Independent Films of All Time", and No. 53 in Empires "500 Greatest Movies of All Time". Kelly released Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut in 2004. The film was adapted into a stage production in 2007 and a sequel, S. Darko, followed in 2009 without Kelly's involvement. In 2021, he announced that work on a new sequel is in progress.

Plot

On October 2, 1988, troubled teenager Donald "Donnie" Darko sleepwalks outside, led by a mysterious voice. Once outside, he meets a figure named Frank in a monstrous rabbit costume. Frank tells Donnie that the world will end in precisely 28 days. Donnie wakes up the next morning on a local golf course and returns home to discover a jet engine has crashed into his bedroom. His older sister Elizabeth tells him the FAA investigators do not know its origin.

Over the next several days, Donnie continues to have visions of Frank, and his parents, Eddie and Rose, send him to psychotherapist Dr. Thurman. Thurman believes Donnie is detached from reality and that his visions of Frank are "daylight hallucinations," symptomatic of paranoid schizophrenia. Frank asks Donnie if he believes in time travel, and Donnie in turn asks his science teacher, Dr. Kenneth Monnitoff. Monnitoff gives Donnie The Philosophy of Time Travel, a book written by Roberta Sparrow, a former science teacher at the school who is now a seemingly senile old woman living outside of town, known to the local teenagers as Grandma Death.

Frank begins to influence Donnie's actions through his sleepwalking episodes, including causing him to flood his high school by breaking a water main, an act for which Donnie almost gets caught. Donnie later starts dating Gretchen Ross, who has recently moved into town with her mother under a new identity to escape her violent stepfather. Gym teacher Kitty Farmer begins teaching "attitude lessons" taken from local motivational speaker Jim Cunningham, but Donnie rebels against these, leading to friction between Kitty and Rose. Kitty arranges for Cunningham to speak at a school assembly, where Donnie insults him. He later finds Cunningham's wallet and address. Gretchen and Donnie go on a movie theater date, where Gretchen falls asleep and Frank reveals himself to be a teenager with his right eye hollow and bleeding. Frank then convinces Donnie to burn down Cunningham's house, which he does while Gretchen is at the theatre. Firefighters discover a hoard of child pornography at the burned remains. Cunningham is arrested, and Kitty, who wishes to testify in his defense, asks Rose to replace her as chaperone for their daughters' dance troupe on its trip to Los Angeles.

With Rose in Los Angeles and Eddie away for business, Donnie and Elizabeth hold a Halloween costume party to celebrate Elizabeth's acceptance to Harvard. At the party, Gretchen arrives distraught as her mother has gone missing, and she and Donnie have sex for the first time. When Donnie realizes that Frank's prophesied end of the world is only hours away, he takes Gretchen and two other friends to see Sparrow. Instead of Sparrow, they find two high school bullies, Seth and Ricky, who are trying to rob Sparrow's home. Donnie, Seth, and Ricky fight in the road in front of her house just as Sparrow returns home. The bullies and Donnie's two friends leave when an oncoming car runs over Gretchen, killing her. The driver turns out to be Elizabeth's boyfriend, Frank Anderson, wearing the same rabbit costume from Donnie's visions. Angered, and realizing what is happening, Donnie shoots Frank in the right eye with his father's gun and walks home carrying Gretchen's body.

Donnie returns home in the morning as a vortex forms over his house. He borrows one of his parents' cars, loads Gretchen's body into it, and drives to a nearby ridge that overlooks the town. There, he watches as the plane carrying Rose and the dance troupe home from Los Angeles gets caught in the vortex's wake, violently ripping off one of its engines and sending it back in time. Events of the previous 28 days unwind. Donnie wakes up in his bedroom, recognizes the date is October 2, and laughs as the jet engine falls into his bedroom, killing him. Around town, those whose lives Donnie would have touched wake up from troubled dreams. Gretchen rides by the Darko home the following day and learns of Donnie's death. Gretchen asks the neighbor, "What was his name?" Gretchen and Rose exchange glances and wave as if they know each other but cannot remember from where.

Cast

Production

Writing

The film originated in late 1997 when Kelly, aged 22, had graduated from USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles. The time of year influenced Kelly to set the film around Halloween. The New York Times homed in on the 1980s coming-of-age story aspect by observing the influence of John Hughes, noting the "ineffectual" adults and the fact that Donnie's "suffering is a way to make him more sensitive". Kelly summarized the script was to be "an amusing and poignant recollection of suburban America in the Reagan era". Kelly used this to develop an initial idea of a jet engine falling onto a house and no one could determine its origin. He then built the rest of the script with the aim of resolving the mystery at the end while taking a "most interesting voyage" to get there, although at this point he knew the plane was to be one that Donnie's mother was on and was from a different dimension. The first draft had Donnie originally wake up at a shopping mall, rather than a golf course. The first draft was between 145–150 pages; Kelly did not change what he had initially written as he was aware that stopping to review it would have caused him to second guess himself. He presented it to producer Sean McKittrick, who recalled he "had never read anything like this before", and helped refine the script while making the story understandable enough. The word "fuck-ass", used in the Darko family dinner scene, was something that two of Kelly's film school friends used during their occasional exchange of insults. Frank was to be a rabbit since the beginning, but Kelly was unsure whether the character originated from a dream or his longtime interest in the animal novel Watership Down by Richard Adams. The novel was to be taught in Karen's English class after the school had censored Graham Greene from her curriculum; it was a subplot that was abandoned in the theatrical version but included in the director's cut.

Development

Kelly knew that the film's complicated story would be difficult to pitch to producers without a script, so he had producers read it first before discussing it with them further. Early on Vince Vaughn was offered the role of Donnie, but he turned it down as he felt he was too old for the part. Mark Wahlberg was also approached, but he insisted that he should play Donnie with a lisp.

Development progressed in early 2000, when actor Jason Schwartzman expressed an interest in the script and agreed to play as Donnie. Kelly said this moment "legitimized me as a director" and recalled "all of a sudden people came out of the woodwork, it was alive again". Around this time Pandora Cinema offered a $2.5 million production budget, and Schwartzman's agent sent the script to Nancy Juvonen, who co-owned Flower Films with actress Drew Barrymore. The pair liked the script and wanted to get involved, which led Kelly and McKittrick to a meeting with the pair in March 2000 on the set of Charlie's Angels (2000), where Barrymore was filming. Barrymore agreed to play as Karen, and Flower Films agreed to increase the budget to $4.5 million. Kelly later called the sum the "bare minimum" to make the film.

After securing enough financial backing, pre-production accelerated and filming was booked for the summer of 2000 and scheduled to accommodate Barrymore, who had just one week's availability. The design was given to costume designer April Ferry who built the costume from scratch and hired a sculptor to create Frank's altered grin. Kelly insisted that Frank's face had to disturb people and create an intense response with the audience. The costume was first presented to the cast and crew at Loyola High School, shortly after filming began. Although Duval wore the suit for almost every scene, a director stepped in for the initial shoot. Kelly recalled, "Everyone just got quiet [...] like, this is really intense. So I knew it was working, and I felt the sense of relief." There was not enough money in the budget for Ferry to dress everyone in 1980s clothing, so she suggested to Kelly that the pupils should wear school uniforms. Kelly agreed, feeling that it would help to portray the idea of Donnie challenging conformity and the educational system. Poster's reputation and connections with Panavision allowed Kelly to shoot with "an unprecedented amount" of filming equipment from them at a reduced price. For night time shots, Kelly showed the crew scenes from Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) for its "idealised ... burnished nostalgia". The polished cinematography in Donnie Darko "creates a feeling of hyper-reality, suggesting that all is not what it seems."

The film was publicized at the Sundance Film Festival as being the first to feature significant digital effects. Kelly wanted to use them only "when absolutely necessary" and have them relate to the story, such as the water barrier seen between Donnie and Frank in his bathroom. The liquid spears that emerge from people's torsos are reminiscent of the water tentacle in The Abyss (1989), and can be seen as a representation of a character's psyche. Alternatively, they demonstrate the "metaphysical idea of predestination", suggesting Donnie is being guided, perhaps by God. Kelly got the idea from the on-screen chalkboard that American football commentator John Madden used to illustrate the movements of the players during a replay. Incidentally, the spears first appear when Donnie is watching a football game on television. The school flooding was inspired by a surreal photomontage by Scott Mutter, in which a giant escalator descends into a rough sea.

Filming

thumb|right|The Angeles Crest Highway

thumb|right|The Darko family home in [[Los Cerritos, Long Beach, California|Los Cerritos in Long Beach]]

Filming was completed in 28 days, the same length of time as the film's events, in July and August 2000. The theatre marquee was shot at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica.

The film's end sequence features a piano-driven cover of "Mad World" by English new wave group Tears for Fears, sung by American musician Gary Jules, a schoolfriend of Andrews, and composed by Michael Andrews. In 2003, the cover of "Mad World" was released as a single that was number one in the United Kingdom for three weeks, during which it was the country's Christmas No. 1 of that year.

Release

Theatrical release

thumb|right|The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Donnie Darko premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, on January 19, 2001. Kelly said it took around six months to secure a theatrical release; at one point, he was close to having it on the premium cable and satellite television network Starz. Donnie firing a gun became one of Kelly's biggest problems while finding a distributor, as the Columbine High School massacre from 1999 raised concerns of the film promoting teenage suicide.

Donnie Darko was theatrically released from October 26, 2001, to its peak of 58 theaters across the United States; its premiere was held at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. The film grossed $110,494 on its opening weekend, ranking No. 34 on the box office. The film was released six weeks after the September 11 attacks and its trailer featured an accident involving an aircraft, which affected its chances of box office success. Kelly said the film was not "attractive to people in that emotional, very deeply traumatizing chapter in our history". Newmarket president Bob Berney said "the bleak mood and the timing" was the cause of the film's failure at the box office, and that critics failed to understand or accept the film for what it is. "The mood filtered through everything." and grossed the equivalent of $2.5 million in its theatrical run. in Shoreditch, London. The project involved several graffiti artists given 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds to complete a work inspired by the film.

Book

Kelly published The Donnie Darko Book in October 2003. Jake Gyllenhaal wrote the foreword, in which he comments on the confusing nature of the film. The book includes an interview with Kelly who discusses the process of making and marketing the film, and questions about his personal life. The full shooting script of the film is included, plus several pages from The Philosophy of Time Travel and photographs and concept sketches such as Frank's mask and slides from Cunningham's school presentation.

Promotion

The official Donnie Darko website, donniedarko.com (which can still be found archived here), was an interactive experience and marketing tool for the film. The website was riddled with puzzles and secrets and contained never-before-seen information about the universe of the film, including information about the fate of many of the characters after the film ends. James Beck has commented on the website's validity as a narrative in and of itself due to the website's introduction of new content while reinforcing themes from the movie like fluidity of time, exemplified by the website's lack of concern for the chronology of the movie. Beck further argues that the Donnie Darko website differs from most other promotional websites in that it treats the user not as an outside viewer, but rather as someone within the universe of the film, creating an experience rather than an advertisement.

Home media

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the film for home video several times. The first was in March 2002 on VHS and DVD formats, of which the latter included bonus material, including audio commentaries, trailers and TV spots, concept art, galleries, and a virtual guide through The Philosophy of Time. Berney declared the film "a runaway hit" on DVD, the sales in the US alone brought in over $10 million. A four-disc set was released in 2011 to commemorate its tenth anniversary, containing the original theatrical version, director's cut, DVD cut from 2002, and digital cut. In 2017, Arrow Films released a limited edition Blu-ray and DVD set in the UK, taken from a new 4K scan of the original print, with supervision and approval by Kelly. In April 2021, Arrow Films released a two-disc Ultra HD Blu-ray box set containing both cuts in 4K resolution restorations from the original negatives, supervised by Kelly and Poster. The discs features Kelly's 1996 short film The Goodbye Place, deleted scenes, B-roll footage, a music video, trailers, and TV spots, as other features from the original DVD release of Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut.

Director's cut

The idea to produce a director's cut of the film originated in late 2003, when Kelly and Berney attended the first-anniversary screening at the Pioneer Theatre in New York City. This cut includes 20 minutes of extra footage and an altered soundtrack.

Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut was released on DVD on February 15, 2005 in both single and double-disc versions; the latter was available in a standard DVD case or in a limited edition lenticular slipcase. Most additional features are exclusive to the two-DVD set, such as an audio commentary with Kelly and Smith, excerpts from the Donnie Darko storyboard, a 52-minute production diary with commentary by director of photography Steven Poster, featurettes, and the film's theatrical trailer.

The DVD of the director's cut includes text of the in-universe book, The Philosophy of Time Travel, written by Roberta Sparrow, which Donnie is given and reads in the film. The text expands on the philosophical and scientific concepts much of the film's plot revolves around, and has been seen as a way to understand the film better than from its theatrical release. As outlined by a Salon article, drawing from the book's text, much of the film takes place in an unstable tangent universe that is physically connected to the primary universe by a wormhole (the entrance to which is the vortex seen at the end of the film) and which is an exact duplicate of the primary, except for an extra metal object known as an "artifact" — which in this case is the jet engine. If the artifact is not sent [back] to the primary universe by the designated living receiver (Donnie) within 28 days, the primary universe will be destroyed upon the collapse of the tangent universe into a black hole. To aid in this task, the living receiver is given super-human abilities such as foresight, physical strength, and elemental powers, but at the cost of troubling visions and paranoia, while the manipulated living (all who live around the receiver) support him in unnatural ways, setting up a domino-like chain of events encouraging him to return the artifact. The manipulated dead (those who die within the tangent universe, like Frank and Gretchen) are more aware than the manipulated living, having the ability to travel through time, and will set an ensurance trap: a scenario which leaves the receiver no choice but to save the primary universe.

Reception

Critical reception

thumb|[[Jake Gyllenhaal was praised for his breakthrough performance.]]

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 88% of critics gave the film a positive review based on 124 reviews, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Richard Kelly's debut feature Donnie Darko is a daring, original vision, packed with jarring ideas and intelligence and featuring a remarkable performance from Jake Gyllenhaal as the troubled title character." Metacritic gives the theatrical version of the film a weighted average score of 71 out of 100 based on 21 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable" reviews.

Andrew Johnson cited the film in Us Weekly, as one of the outstanding films at Sundance in 2001, describing it as "a heady blend of science fiction, spirituality, and teen angst". Jean Oppenheimer of New Times (LA) praised the film, saying, "Like gathering storm clouds, Donnie Darko creates an atmosphere of eerie calm and mounting menace—[and] stands as one of the most exceptional movies of 2001." Writing for ABC Australia, Megan Spencer called the movie "menacing, dreamy and exciting" and noted "it could take you to a deeply emotional place lying dormant in your soul". Roger Ebert gave the theatrical version of the film two and a half stars out of four, but later gave the director's cut three stars out of four.

Other critics like Sam Adams called the movie an apparent "big mess", citing incoherent plot, sloppy writing, and an uneven tone. Adams also took issue with the "seemingly irrelevant" but oft-referenced setting in a suburban America in the 1980s, claiming that it "serves as another example of the movie's struggle to find identity". Another review from the San Antonio Current lauds the build-up, citing vast build of mysteries with compelling characters, but claims the movie's ending "leaves much to be desired", calling it cheap and anti-climactic. The film has been praised for its 1980s nostalgia.

Accolades

2001: Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko script won "Best Screenplay" at the San Diego Film Critics Society. Donnie Darko also won the "Audience Award" for Best Feature at the Sweden Fantastic Film Festival. The film was nominated for "Best Film" at the Sitges Film Festival and for the "Grand Jury Prize" at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards including Best First Feature, Best First Screenplay and Best Male Lead for Gyllenhaal.
2002: Donnie Darko won the "Special Award" at the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films's 28th Saturn Awards. The movie also won the "Silver Scream Award" at the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival. The film was also nominated for the "Best Breakthrough Filmmaker" at the Online Film Critics Society Awards.

; Rankings

2005: Ranked in the top five on My Favourite Film, an Australian poll conducted by the ABC.
2006: #9 in FilmFour's 50 Films to See Before You Die.
2006: #2 in Empires "50 Greatest Independent Films of All Time" list.
2008: #53 in Empires "500 Greatest Movies of All Time" poll.

Sequels

S. Darko

A 2009 sequel, S. Darko, set seven years afterwards, centers on the now 18-year-old Sam, Donnie's younger sister. Sam is troubled by her brother's death and begins to have problems with sleepwalking, along with strange dreams that hint at an impending major catastrophe. The sequel received extremely negative reviews. Kelly said he had no involvement in the sequel as he no longer owns the rights to the original. In 2017, Kelly said that he resents being asked about the sequel and that he had never seen it.

New sequel

In 2017, Kelly revealed that he had ideas for a new sequel that is "much bigger and more ambitious" than the original. In January 2021, he announced that "an enormous amount of work" had been done on the script. He was inspired to do so after a 2010 meeting with James Cameron, who found the film "disturbing" and had Kelly explain what happened to Donnie at the end of the film. Cameron suggested to Kelly that he continue working on the project, which made Kelly realize that "there was really something big, something epic that could be done."

In other media

Marcus Stern, associate director of the American Repertory Theater, directed a stage adaptation of Donnie Darko at the Zero Arrow Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the fall of 2007. It ran from October 27 until November 18, 2007, with opening night scheduled near Halloween. An article written by the production drama team says the director and production team planned to "embrace the challenge to make the fantastical elements come alive on stage". A playable skin based on Frank was released in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War in October 2021.