Blink and you might have missed the original theatrical release of “Donnie Darko.” But then again, even if you stared right at it, you still might have missed it.

An extravagant pastiche of teen dramedy, gothic romance, period piece, supernatural fantasy, metaphysical thriller, music video, narrative puzzle, and more, the feature debut of 26-year-old writer-director Richard Kelly sent a dozen familiar genres head over heels through the looking glass. It verged, at times, on the unintelligible, but for certain members of the audience it was also unforgettable.

After an incoherent marketing campaign launched the film in the fall of 2001 – an inauspicious season for a complex, angst-ridden narrative – the film was widely ignored. “Donnie Darko” closed after barely grossing $500,000. Almost as quickly as it vanished from theaters, however, it began to flourish in unexpected places.

Spurred by instantly successful midnight screenings at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater in the East Village, word on “Darko” began to spread. By the start of the new year, it was the kind of movie you overheard people talking excitedly about in downtown bars.Three years later, Mr. Kelly’s commercial bomb was a hit at independent theaters around the country (as of this writing, the film has played theatrically in one form or another for almost 1,000 straight days), and had surpassed $10 million dollars in DVD sales. The phenomenon climaxes this week as “Donnie Darko” returns to commercial theaters in an expanded “Director’s Cut.”

Manna for cultists, the new version further convolutes one of the most absorbingly convoluted movies this side of “Mulholland Drive” (also released to underwhelming box-office in October of 2001). Set against the backdrop of the Bush-Dukakis election, “Donnie Darko” concerns a moody, medicated, possibly schizophrenic teenager (Jake Gyllenhaal), his visions of a demonic bunny named Frank, and an apocalyptic rift in the space-time continuum. The essential subject is alienated suburban adolescence in the late 1980s; subthemes include theoretical physics, time-travel, Sparkle Motion, and the fragility of “attitudinal beliefs.” Drew Barrymore co-stars as a liberal English teacher, Patrick Swayze as a motivational speaker with a dungeon full of kiddie porn.

No surprise that this strange little film full of big ideas bewildered distributors and divided critics at its Sundance premiere. Reporting from Park City, Variety summed up the mixed reception: “muddled” and “overweeningly ambitious” but “promising,” with possible attraction for an adventuresome niche audience. When the film opened theatrically later that fall, Roger Ebert expressed frustration at the narrative’s lack of “closure.” As if inspired by the movie’s jumble of tonalities, the New York Times issued a semi-coherent review that pronounced the film “lumpy and dolorous.”

Further downtown, the Village Voice raved of a “wondrous, moodily involved piece of work,” riffed on the galvanic use of ” ‘X-Files’ magic realism,” and zeroed in on its potent synchronicity with the national mood: “The events of September 11 have rendered most movies inconsequential; the heartbreaking ‘Donnie Darko,’ by contrast, feels weirdly consoling. Period piece though it is, Kelly’s highschool gothic seems perfectly attuned to the present moment. This would be a splendid debut under any circumstances; released for Halloween 2001, it has uncanny gravitas.”

Ultimately, though, it was the fans that rescued the movie. It’s not uncommon for a critically acclaimed but audience-ignored movie to be re-released. (“Mulholland Drive” reopened shortly after its disappointing initial run). But “Donnie Darko” is a special case: a commercial failure resuscitated as cult hit by the audience alone.

The film’s unusual success as a midnight movie can partly be explained by this demographic pull. Unlike other candidates for modern midnight moviedom (say, “Pootie Tang” or “Showgirls”), “Donnie Darko” strongly articulates the anxieties, desires, and memories of specific generational experience and teenage experience in general. And as Phil Hartman, co-owner of the Pioneer theater observes, the East Village “is perfect for alienated teenagers.”

In fact, it was Mr. Hartman’s own son who first brought his attention to the film. “At the time, I was looking around for something we might book as a midnight movie,” he remembers, “and Leon said we should check out ‘Donnie Darko.'”Although he doubted the tradition could be truly resuscitated, to his eyes it had all the makings of a classic midnight movie. “You need something that is a visual trip, that works on repeated viewings and is open to reinterpretations, something that you can watch in altered states. ” Soon he was peeking into the screening to find “people laughing at things that no normal audience would laugh at” – not to mention the occasional fan dressed up in a bunny suit.

Nevertheless, this is one of the least participatory of midnight movies: the story of an anxious introvert embraced by anxious introverts. Mr. Kelly’s deft recreation of 1980s culture coincided with a new wave of retro sensibility. It wasn’t just the songs, clothes (Donnie’s surf-logo T-shirts are a masterstroke), and surface period details that connected with the audience flocking to the Pioneer screenings. Through its complex of tones, in the texture of its nostalgic pastiche, “Darko” carries a palpable feeling of the time like few other movies.

“Donnie Darko” cut deep into the consciousness of a generation, which responded by rescuing it from the tyrannical judgment of a box-office dominated film culture. Our psyches may be less fragile now than they were three years ago, but “Donnie Darko” remains an eloquent, resonant experience. One of the best films of 2001 has returned as one of the best films of 2004.