‘Donnie Darko,’ 25 Years on, Still Gets Lost in Its Own Rabbit Hole

Richard Kelly’s “Donnie Darko” (2001) will be appearing in select theaters this month on the occasion of its 25th anniversary, coinciding with the oncoming All Hallow’s Eve. The denouement of the picture takes place as trick-or-treaters make the rounds on Oct. 31. An additional, if unintentional, concurrence is a recent spate of news reports about the end of times, in this case predicated on the doings of tech savants and their hench-bros. “Donnie Darko” is down with the apocalypse.Mr. Kelly’s film shouldn’t be considered particularly prescient as the apocalypse has long been predicted and, need it be mentioned, long forestalled. “Donnie Darko,” the plot of which takes place during the 1988 presidential election, isn’t concerned with tech, but mental health. The title character, portrayed by a 20-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal, is an outcast given to sleep-walking and hallucinations. Chief among the latter is a towering figure wearing a pewter-gray rabbit costume. Frank is its name and he’s trouble.That’s right, Frank and not Harvey. Mr. Kelly likely didn’t want to tip his hand too much by referencing Henry Koster’s 1950 Jimmy Stewart vehicle, “Harvey,” in which the venerable actor played a man whose best friend is an invisible 6’4″ rabbit. Still, tip his hand Mr. Kelly did, and “Donnie Darko” is rife with allusions to other pictures — Robert Zemeckis’s “Back to the Future” (1985), say, or Brian De Palma’s “Carrie” (1976). Specific directors, too, are recalled like Frank Capra, David Lynch, and Terry Gilliam. A body would not be wrong in pointing up a moralism gleaned from the original “Twilight Zone” television series.No one can fault a rookie filmmaker for his ambition. “Donnie Darko” has Mr. Kelly swinging for the bleachers in his debut. Couching the story in horror movie trappings and a pop culture mise-en-scène, the auteur set out to create a cinematic version of the Great American Novel. It touches upon generational conflict, religious intolerance, the fallacies of exceptionalism, and the limits of rationalism. Would that Mr. Kelly had more than a sitcom-level understanding of his themes. Aiming for a satirical sublime, he settled for Hollywood orthodoxy. The results are pat, trite and more of the same.The Darkos of Middlesex, Virginia, have their lives disrupted when a jet engine falls from the sky directly onto their home. The whys-and-wherefores of this occurrence are left, for the most part, unexplained. Some mysteries are better left alone, Mr. Kelly would seem to suggest, but he doesn’t subsequently follow up on his own illogic. The thing about skeezy motivational speaker Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze), a high school prig who’s desperately enamored with him, Kitty Farmer (Beth Grant) and a stickin’-to-the-man English teacher, Karen Pomeroy (Drew Barrymore) is how rote they are as characters and how evident they are as signifiers. Cliches are indulged, not exposed or shattered.The same goes for the setting. Someone writing a study on the representation of suburbia in our entertainments would have to conclude that it is a place of unmitigated malevolence — that is, when it isn’t a bedrock of bland resignation. Mr. Kelly slides into this narrow worldview, the creation of coastal elites who otherwise can’t be bothered with real human beings, because it’s the only one truth he knows. When Joe Dante lampooned the quiddities of suburbia in “The Burbs” (1989), he did so with cartoonish panache. Mr. Kelly, in direct comparison, fancies himself a provocateur. He reveals himself, in the end, as a preacher content to coddle his choir.In fairness to the auteur, the overall arc of the film does satisfy by dint of a side story about time travel turning into its primary motif. By that point, however, Mr. Kelly’s picture, having flaunted its eccentricities, has worn out its welcome. Truly peculiar films — Herk Harvey’s “Carnival of Souls” (1962), for instance, or Joel Potrykus’s “Vulcanizadora” (2024) — are made out of necessity, not out of will. “Donnie Darko” is flat-footed and pretentious, a valentine crafted by an auteur and delivered to himself. There’s no love lost here.

‘Donnie Darko,’ 25 Years on, Still Gets Lost in Its Own Rabbit Hole

‘Donnie Darko,’ 25 Years on, Still Gets Lost in Its Own Rabbit Hole

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