Review of Donnie Darko (2001) by Rene H — 05 Mar 2013

I have been watching English movies for more than 13 years, and I wonder why I have not seen this film before? have I been hibernating?.

Donnie Darko is really an original and daring movie and I must say that the background music is sometimes really scary. Gyllenhaal's performance stands out and the beauty of the film is its complexity,a must watch for all sci-fi lovers.

SPOILERS.

Donnie Darko needs an always alert mind to understand the plot. Many of my friends had trouble with the ending, they said they understood nothing that happened in the end. Actually the pace is tremendously increased as the film progresses to the end.

It took me at least 2 watches to actually understand the climax. Every one near the vortex was willingly or unknowingly assisting Darko in destroying the tangent universe. Only Darko can do it cause he is the chosen receiver or something, the vortex chooses it randomly. The grandma death was willingly assisting Darko, that is why she jumped in front of real Frank' car (the bunny that often visits Darko is the Frank from the tangent universe, 26 days in future than the original universe).

Darko' girlfriend dies and he feels himself lost. So he takes her body into a mountain and there he sees a plane whose engine is the actual artifact. Darko only wanted to end things now, so he used the ability of the telekinetic grab to actually pull the engine out of the plane, it moves through the vortex and the tangent universe is destroyed as it becomes devoid of the artifact before it collapses onto the real universe. Mean time the real universe is set to where it started, that is 26 days before, the night where the artifact actually fell on Darko' roof. But now comes the twist, there is no Frank (bunny) to wake Darko up and save him. So the artifact landed on him instead. Darko accidentally saves the entire universe but dies in the end.