Directed by Richard Kelly
Written by Richard Kelly
Produced by: Adam Fields, Nancy Juvones, Sean McKittrick and Drew Barrymore
Starring: Jake Gyllenghaal, Maggie Gyllenghaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne, James Duval, Beth Grant, Katherine Ross, Patrick Swayze and Noah Wyle
Country: USA
Release Date: October 26, 2001
WHY YOU SHOULD SEE IT?
Donnie Darko is a cult science fiction and dram film. This movie was written in a kind of coil back puzzle. The movie is an opera prima that own its success from the people trying to figure the movie. Donnie Darko is an extraordinary and unique vision about relationships and the secret of the universe.
PLOT
On October 2, 1988, Donnie Darko, a troubled teenager living in Middlesex, Virginia, is awakened and led outside by a figure in a monstrous rabbit costume, who introduces himself as “Frank” and tells him the world will end in 28 days. At dawn, Donnie returns home to find a jet engine has crashed into his bedroom. His older sister, Elizabeth, informs him the FAA investigators don’t know where it came from.
Donnie tells his psychotherapist Dr. Thurman about his continuing visits from Frank. Acting under Frank’s influence, he floods his school by damaging a water main. He also begins dating new student Gretchen Ross, who has moved to town with her mother under a new identity to escape her violent stepfather. Conservative gym teacher Kitty Farmer blames the flooding on the influence of the short story “The Destructors”, assigned by dedicated English teacher Karen Pomeroy, and begins teaching attitude lessons taken from motivational speaker Jim Cunningham. Donnie rebels against these lessons, leading to friction between Kitty and Donnie’s mother Rose.
Donnie asks his science teacher Dr. Kenneth Monnitoffabout time travel after Frank brings up the topic, and is given the book The Philosophy of Time Travel, written by Roberta Sparrow, a former science teacher at the school who is now a seemingly senile old woman.
Dr. Thurman tells Donnie’s parents that he is detached from reality, and that his visions of Frank are “daylight hallucinations”, symptomatic of paranoid schizophrenia. Donnie disrupts a speech being given by Jim Cunningham by insulting him in front of the student body, then burns down Cunningham’s house on instructions from Frank. When police find evidence of a child pornographyoperation in the house’s remains, Cunningham is arrested. During a hypnotherapy session, Donnie confesses his crimes to Dr. Thurman and says that Frank will soon kill someone.
Rose agrees to replace Kitty as chaperone for her daughter Samantha’s dance troupe in Los Angeles, so Kitty can testify in Cunningham’s defense; with her husband Eddie in New York on business, her older children are home alone.
Donnie and Elizabeth take the opportunity to throw a Halloween party to celebrate her acceptance to Harvard University. Gretchen arrives, distraught that her mother has disappeared. Realizing that only hours remain before Frank’s prophesied end of the world, Donnie takes Gretchen and two friends to seek Roberta Sparrow at her house. They are attacked by two school bullies ) who are attempting to rob Sparrow’s house, and the fight spills into the street. An oncoming car swerves to avoid Sparrow but runs over Gretchen, killing her. The driver is Elizabeth’s boyfriend Frank, wearing the same rabbit costume as the Frank of Donnie’s visions. Donnie shoots him with his father’s gun.
As a vortex forms in dark clouds above his house, Donnie drives into the hills and watches as an airplane descends above. The plane, carrying Rose and the dance troupe, is wrenched violently as one of its engines detaches and falls into the vortex. Events of the previous 28 days recapitulate in reverse order and action, until Donnie finds himself in bed on the morning of October 2. As he sits laughing maniacally, the jet engine crashes through his room, killing him. Others with whom Donnie had interacted in the 28 days awaken, some looking disturbed. Gretchen rides by Donnie’s house and learns of his death from a neighborhood boy, but says she did not know him. Gretchen and Rose exchange a glance and wave as if they know one another, but cannot remember where from.
Coco's Film List 