Review of Donnie Darko (2001) by Russell G — 14 Nov 2014

Get ready to watch this movie and leave scratching your head. This is a mind-warping movie that requires more than one watch in order to catch all the subtleties that are so important to the story. Even then, it helps to watch a video recap and explanation to appreciate it more fully.

Things are not overly complicated, but rather undefined. It is hard to tell what is happening without understanding of the Philosophy of Time Travel book. The characters refer to this book more than once, but never explain it or the significance of the writings.

This book that is the key to understanding the rules and structure to the time travel and alternate relies that are taking place in the story. One should not have to read the Philosophy of Time Travel to understand what is happening.

That is the responsibility of the screenwriters and the director, and they left it out. Despite the vagueness, it is an exceedingly clever story. On the surface, it is a melancholy story about a depressed and troubled but bright teenage boy.

He is seeing disturbing things and having unusual dreams, that no one else understands. A closer investigation turns up an extremely well constructed highly consistent set of details throughout the movie that give the story the intended deeper reading.

Only in the details do we come to understand that this more about an unstable fractured alternate set of realities and time travel. It is more involved than most time-travel movies, but with some homework and reviewing, it is unexpectedly rewarding.

The story is still full of darkness and sadness, but it weaves in bits of humor and works on a conceptual level so effectively that it is somehow not a major bummer. This is a must-see if you have patience and like to think about the movies after watching them.

If you are in a casual mood for simple entertainment save it for another day when you want a movie and its story to challenge you.