His family, relieved Donnie was spared, tells him that the FAA doesn't know where the engine came from. Donnie returns home the next morning to find his house surrounded by firetrucks and cops while he was gone, a jet engine fell from the sky, landing directly in his bedroom. He follows the voice to a local golf course, where a big talking rabbit named Frank tells him that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 4 minutes and 12 seconds.Īt home, Elizabeth has just returned from a night out - her date honks his horn when she safely gets through the door - when an explosion shakes the house. An argument around the dinner table reveals that Donnie is on some kind of medication.Īt midnight that evening, Donnie is called out of bed by a mysterious voice. We meet Donnie's family: his sisters Elizabeth (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jake's real-life sister) and Samantha (Daveigh Chase), and his parents (Mary McDonnell and Holmes Osborne). We're told he is a sleepwalker and never knows where he'll wake up on any given morning.
He wakes up and looks out over the valley below, including his hometown, Middlesex, Va. We first meet Donnie Darko (Gyllenhaal) at sunrise he's asleep in the middle of a mountain road. (The publishers of Salon have asked me to note that instead of reading you might consider blindly flipping through the next six pages and clicking on all the ads.) While I will be including some information from the director's cut in this explanation, very little of this is true spoiler material, as almost all the additions to the film were previously included among the movie's DVD extras. So if you haven't seen "Darko" and don't want the film spoiled, don't read any further. And I'm happy to say that, after all that, I more or less pretty much understand what the hell happens in "Donnie Darko." I've created the definitive guide to the mystifying plot of "Donnie Darko." Like the junior detectives of Mulholland Drive, I've compiled clues from all over the place: not only from repeated viewings of the original and the director's cut, but also from the film's Web site, Kelly's screenplay, the DVD commentaries, published interviews with the filmmaker, Internet speculation, shower-based cogitation, and plenty of arguments with my friends. In his foreword to "The Donnie Darko Book," the film's star, Jake Gyllenhaal, writes, "What is 'Donnie Darko' about? I have no idea." And Kelly himself mentions in the DVD commentary that "this film kinda does need Cliffs Notes."Īnd so Cliffs Notes it shall have. Countless Web sites devote themselves to teasing out its many mysteries. The film, with its countdown to apocalypse, its intimations of time travel and alternate universes, and its 6-foot-tall talking bunny rabbit, lends itself easily to wildly divergent explanations. With the release of Kelly's director's cut, an even wider audience should have a chance to be bewildered by "Donnie Darko's" mix of '80s teen comedy, psychological drama and science fiction. sales alone - have turned what was once a confusing and oblique failure into a confusing and oblique cult hit. Years of midnight screenings at theaters around the country and the film's impressive success on DVD - taking in more than $10 million to date in U.S. Three years later, "Donnie Darko" is being re-released in a handsome director's cut, with remastered sound and picture, 20 minutes of new footage and new visual effects. While its critical reception included a number of rave reviews, the film died on the vine, taking in only half a million dollars in its initial release in a handful of cities.
SUPERPOWERED NIGHT CITY MAGGIE AND KELLY HOW TO
11, the film's distributor was understandably uncertain how to sell a film whose bizarre events are set in motion by a jet engine falling from the sky. "Darko," 26-year-old writer-director Richard Kelly's first film, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore and Patrick Swayze, came out on October 26, 2001. 1000 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes and 0 seconds ago, Donnie Darko flopped.
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