I Still Haven't Figured it out.
4/4 stars

Donnie Darko tells the story of a delusional teenager who begins to see visions of a a man in a blue bunny suit, who orders him to do certain tasks through suggestive clues and voices, to which he insists he MUST do, or the world will end.

I won't give the full plot away, for that would just leave you more stumped. Basicly, the begining is the end, and the middle never happened. It is simply a alternate outcome if the begining had not happened. But because something at the end of the middle dictates the begining, the movie should not have even happened. That's why i continue seeing it, i know there is something else in it for me, and maybe someday i will peice together the puzzle that is Donnie Darko.

Maybe I'm crazy keeping up my wild goose chase for the answers, but everytime i see the movie, i understand more of the movie. That leads me to think there is something else i may have missed... or overlooked. I Don't think any movie has given me something to think about everytime i see it quite like Donnie Darko. Now, really, this is a movie you must see to get the plot, if I were to give the full, detailed, complex plot it would take far too long to which reveals the majestic brilliance of Donnie Darko; which is that their are endless amounts of theories and interpretations, making it one of the most thought-provoking fantasy of recent years. Basicly, the movie has so many bizzare plot twists and wierdass sub-plots, nobody can narrow everything in it down into a single plot. The plot you see on the Overview is simply the closest anyone has ever gotten. Adding to the already deep and complex storyline, there are also a vast amount of underlying themes, most noticeable the character Patrick Swayze plays, in which it represents a false 'superior', referring clearly to religion.

This film is unique, compelling, smart, funny at times, and ultimately rewarding, and contains some brilliantly-used special effects to keep viewers enthralled. It is not a movie that viewers will be able to watch just once; as they will find themselves coming back to see things they missed before. In fact, Film4 lists this as one of the 50 films you should see before you die (#9), and rightly so.

The realistic touches are unbearable. The dinner table banter between brother and sister? The boorish friends' conversation about Smurfs? The dialogue for these scenes is listed on IMDb's "memorable quotes" page. Why? We have this half-formed idea that lame insults, or over-serious debates about pop culture refuse, are somehow "ironic." And that anything realistic is worth inserting into a movie.

Yet, by the end of "Donnie Darko" I was somewhat won over. I enjoyed the complicated plot twists, some of the strange images and Michael Andrews's splendid electronic score.

Review by Wolfman