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Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut

In 2001, Richard Kelly unleashed Donnie Darko, a curious excursion through '80s teen culture with ominous science-fiction overtones. Critics were divided, if not baffled, by this surreal meeting of time travel and tragic suburban destiny, but the film quickly amassed a cult audience among young hipsters, genre buffs, and conossieurs of weird cinema. In the meantime, the young star of Donnie Darko, Jake Gyllenhaal, catapulted into the top ranks of young Hollywood while Kelly has struggled valiantly to get his sophomore effort off the ground. Now, Newmarket Films—in anticipation of a DVD re-release—has put Donnie Darko back into theatres or, as Rod Serling might say, submitted it for your approval.

The Twilight Zone-esque tale unfolds at a deliberate pace but never loosens its hold on the viewer. Gyllenhaal plays the surly title character, a neurotic teen having an on-again, off-again relationship with the medication prescribed by his psychoanalyst. As if things aren't strained enough in the Darko home (also populated by mother Mary McDonnell, father Holmes Osborne, and sister Maggie Gyllenhaal), a jet engine screams out of the sky and into Donnie's bedroom. Fortune spares Donnie on that morning of October 2, 1988. His reprieve is little consolation, however, as a man in a giant bunny costume appears to him and promises the end of the world in less than a month, on Halloween night.

Donnie Darko is a masterpiece of mood, with sedated observation of the absurdities subjected on the characters, from the Bush-Dukakis election to the self-help twaddle about "attitudinal beliefs" espoused by local celebrity Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze). Many films try to fill themselves with quirks, but Kelly's have a conviction which feels genuine, which makes them darkly funny. That conviction also makes possible the fearful loss of faith in so-called reality which makes time travel and apocalypse sound credible. Most importantly, Donnie is a believable character: never a conventional hero, but a kid trying to work it all out.

Donnie Darko is made less obscure—for better or worse—in Kelly's expanded director's cut. The challenging 2001 cut leaves more to the imagination; the 2004 cut plays more like The Sixth Sense, a tonal emotional thriller with a twist. Scenes fleshing out character relationships are heartfelt and welcome (like a newly added scene between Donnie and his father, and another showing Drew Barrymore's put-upon English teacher reluctantly replacing Graham Greene's The Destructors with Watership Down); new transitional passages delineating some time-travel concepts from Roberta Sparrow's book may spell out too much, though they bring the narrative into focus. In either configuration, Donnie Darko remains a vivid experience.