Review of Donnie Darko (2001) by Redowlreviews — 10 Jul 2013

(skip to the last paragraph for a concise one-sentence summary and a number).

Don’t get me wrong. Donnie Darko is a wonderful film, full of suspense, motion, and a constantly intriguing, if not unsettling mood. However, it’s plagued with two problems: it’s too ambitious, and it never stops to give the audience time to collect its thoughts.

Firstly, the ambition. It appears that director Richard Kelly had a lot on his mind for this story. Filmmaking is an art that cthat cthat cannot be done without vast imagination and a spinning mind. Unfortunately, Kelly’s ambition got the best of him. The result is an overly-thrilling roller coaster ride that simultaneously intrigues and disorients its riders. Even the “resolution” at the end with Frank the rabbit (a character I personally like) and the storm of the tangent universe couldn’t clean up the mess that was Donnie Darko’s plotline.

A bigger problem with the film was its rushing speed. There was never one moment where Donnie stopped to explain to the audience what exactly was going on (one of his therapy sessions could have done this seamlessly). Instead, we are given sporadic (and untimely) ten-second excerpts from a woman’s philosophical discoveries in time travel. Again, this results in a disorienting roller coaster ride that would be a lot more fun if Kelly had taken a moment to decelerate and catch the audience up on the twisting plotline.

In conclusion, this is what I have to say: the film had a very interesting premise, a fascinatingly somber ambiance, and some wildly good moments of suspense and filmmaking genius (most of which involved Frank and/or sleepwalking). Sadly, its ultimate potential was not met, and what could have been one of the best films of the year turned out instead to be a flurry of ambitious ideas riddled with sci-fi fancies and schizophrenic attacks.