DONNIE DARKO (2001) All right! A demon-rabbit! What a weird little movie. I'm guaranteed to check out any movie which features anybody taking commands from a demonic rabbit. Even by demonic-rabbit standards, this one is weird. I won't even pretend to remotely understand the ending. But still, it's interesting, and it kept me hooked throughout. Is that enough for me to recommend it? I don't know. I guess not, if I don't know. Still, it was pretty neat. High school nerd Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) is clearly crazy. After all, he's taking commands and predictions of the future from a demonic rabbit that he sees when he's sleepwalking. Luckily for him, one of these sleepwalking sessions happens the night a jet engine (from a plane nobody can confirm exists) crashes into his bedroom. That same night, the rabbit tells him that the world is going to end, and tells him exactly when. As if Donnie wasn't crazy enough already. Donnie's sister Elizabeth is played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jake's sister, obviously. They seem to understand this brother/sister dynamic well enough that it plays out brilliantly on screen, particularly in a dinner conversation which is totally uncomfortable but hilarious at the same time. His parents, played by Mary McDonnell and Holmes Osbourne, are both likeable and don't seem likely to have raised a kid as obviously out of his tree as Donnie is, but then, mom is rarely seen without a drink in her hand, and dad just seems kind of ineffectual. Donnie is, as you might imagine, a very socially awkward teenager at the private school he goes to. It's a little jarring at first to see a teenager who isn't supposed to be a villain smoking in a movie, but at this school, smoking doesn't seem like such a big deal when there are kids snorting coke in the halls. Drew Barrymore (a producer on the film) plays against type as Donnie's cynical even kinda crusty English teacher. Also cast against type is Patrick Swayze as a motivational speaker/scam artist whose whole schtick is that everything falls on a continuum between fear and love. It seems odd that Swayze would now be in a movie set in 1988, when he was one of the biggest stars in the world and nobody who looked like Patrick Swayze could escape being compared to him. Donnie descends into weird hallucinations (or perceptions of stuff other people can't see, whatever) beyond the demon-rabbit, like liquid tentacles that poke out of people's chests. He also becomes highly interested in time travel, particularly a book written decades ago by a neighbor who has since been reduced to apparent senility. Donnie Darko has a remarkably non-embarrassing soundtrack considering its late-80's setting. Otherwise, there are way too many pop-culture references. I know it's the late 80's, but this is too much, like a conversation about the sex lives of Smurfs, which just feels tacked on to help make the film trendy. Written and directed by first-timer Richard Kelley, who would've been all of 13 years old when this movie is set. From what I recall of the day (I've tried to forget), he does seem to have captured at least an open-eyed teenaged perspective of the time. The demon-rabbit itself really isn't as cool as I was hoping - it's basically a guy in a bunny suit and a weird-looking rabbit mask, a good-enough approximation of which can be seen right there on the front of the box. I was hoping for a giant rabbit with fangs, or something. As for the sci-fi/time travel angle, well, that's what lost me here. Frankly, it's been too long since I've seen it to offer an honest guess as to whether that's my failing or the film's (I'm going on weeks-old notes here). This movie never lost my interest, but there did come that point where I just lost any grasp I had of what was going on, and it didn't win me over enough to want to pop it back into the VCR and watch it again with that in mind. However, I do know I'll be seeing it again, one of these days. So, yeah, what the hell, check it out, it's not gonna kill ya. BACK TO THE D's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE