Dark, Chilling, Reavealing, and EXCEPTIONAL!

I originally wanted to see this movie because of it's stellar cast. Drew Barrymore, Jake Gyllenhaal, Noah Wylie, and Mary Mcdonnell are all exceptionally cast. Gyllenhaal plays Donnie Darko, a tainted young man who hears voices and sleepwalks. One night he is drawn from his bed onto a golf course. While there he meets Frank, a 6 foot tall rabbit who tells him that the end of the world is coming. Donnie narrowly escapes death as an airplane engine falls into his bedroom and lands on his bed where he should have been sleeping. Upon finding out this information, Donnie begins to notice things that normal people don't see. He starts to question life, and the theory of time travel. It eventually becomes obvious to Donnie that he was not suppose to survive the night of the engine crash. Now he must put all the pieces of the puzzle and figure out how to undo the damage before he loses all those closest to him. Anyone with an interest in time travel or a love for dark films should see this. A++ film.

Powerful and thought inspiring

This film is a clever fantasy with a suprising twist, which should keep most viewers guessing until the end. In fact, ~Darko~ has a great ending, subtle, thought inspiring and extremly powerful.

Donnie Darko is an over-sensitive teenager, brilliant in many ways, who is convinced the world will come to an end on a certain day in the near future. His 'imaginary' friend, a hypnotic and somewhat demonic rabbit, commands Donnie to do certain things, (the famous schizophenic voice) also informing the boy of future events. The screenplay by director and writer, Richard Kelly, is indeed flawless, which manages to connect seemingly disconnected people and events in the boy's life in a very believable and compelling way.

The cast is an unusual ensemble that one would not expect to see in an offbeat film - Patrick Swayze, Mary McDonnell and Drew Barrymore; all gave great performances, and especially Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead, whose haunting expression, particularly his eyes during his strange visions, was quite remarkable.

~Donnie Darko~ is one of those rare and surprising films, dark, humorous and original - this is an excellent motion picture.

Undoubted young talent produces pretentious film-making

I have high hopes for Richard Kelly as his talent, ideas, motivation, enthusiasm and everything you need for a good career in directing is evident in this movie.

Sadly, this time around, its a painful experience for the viewer, unless you are so into puzzles, sci-fi, symbolism and finding out what a movie means AFTER watching it that you can forgive what is, after all, really poor storytelling.

Hint - A really good movie doesn't need multiple websites stacked with backstory and explanations.

And, as usual, its all the fault of the script, which isn't a film script at all. Its a / Philosophy/ Religiousy / Science Fictiony puzzle (although I left out a few things there). This puzzle unfolds as a series of vignettes masquerading as scenes, related by Kelly's 'themes' but little else.

The majority of the characters are little more than pawns whose job is just to move the puzzle plot on... nice..... and.......... slowly (with the odd music montage and cute-dialogue sketch thrown in, as if they were ad breaks).

The main character was ok and most of the actors did well with what little they had to work with, but the MAJORITY of them should have been cut from the finished film, they are so redundant.

There is no drive in the film and little sense of progression. We know loosely what the main character is ultimately facing, but never immediately so there is never any sense of anticipation, suspense, hope or fear for the viewer. We are simply passed more information and explanations to debate and question later with our fellow sci-fi-symbol buffs.

I'm not saying you sit there waiting for things to happen because things do happen (to be fair some of the "scenes" are entertaining in their own way). But you do sit there waiting for a STORY to develop so you can start experiencing something (which is what we pay our money for, isn't it?).

But there is no drama, no connection and NO STORY.

All you get is a cool song and a plot twist (explained). Some people are happy with that I guess