r/donniedarko

I loved the film as a teenager, but over the years I’ve seen a lot of people say they find it cringe looking back on it as adults.

So I put it to the test myself.

But, what’s your experience rewatching it after all these years? Do you feel different about it or what’s the general consensus?

Anyone know anything about this? Was looking for the screenplay book when I saw that Richard Kelly is set to release a 600 page sequel to Donnie Darko at the end of the year. But I can't find any news or info about it.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GVXSX1HN?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback

s it a "wrong" way of watching when I don't totally understand all the pages of Sparrow and the tangent universe and what it means? The film feels a lot "realer" for me, idk. What's your take on it? What's the best way to enjoy/view the movie?

Also a few questions regarding it:
From what I've gathered, the 28 days are the tangent universe which somehow was caused by the engine. Donnie has to send the engine back so everybody doesn't die. But when does he realize all that? Why was Frank so important? I get that his father/Grandpa was apparently cursed from what Donnie's parents talk about in the hotel, but does that mean anything for the story? And about Gretchen, do we ever get to know what happened to her mother/father? How did Donnie send the artefact back? Do his mother and sister die in the tangent universe because the turbine comes from their plane? what happens to the tangent universe Donnie? Just random questions that popped up rn.

if anyone has questions this might be an interesting topic of philosophical exploration -

so the short film is mostly just an improvised monologue on why Donnie's response to Monnitoff falls apart "not if you're travelling within God's channel" -

being a bit of a rabbit pulled out of a hat - [Donnie would have to account for the fact that there's no theoretical groundwork for this so-called channel - so that basically you can apply any meaning to it - and get from point A to point B - without taking Monnitoff's already insightful response into account -

which is: if you could see into the future, you'd be given a choice, and this choice itself collapses the "destined path"

so interestingly Donnie's paradox is that his idea of free will is basically nonexistent if he's subsuming free will to a higher power - which he is -

so in Donnie's view there's no betrayal of the seen future - not even a possibility of its betrayal - because a higher power is directing the path - or maybe he just sees his own path as being guided by this higher power - so that it only makes sense if there's no free will -

which I actually just realized now - that Donnie's argument is really an argument against free will - conscious or not - at least in this specific scenario where he's theorizing with Monnitoff

what's your view?

would a found footage short film with a fictional professor who actually continues the conversation be interesting to the lot of you?

So this is just an idea about how the primary universe might tie up loose ends after the end of the movie.

And so firstly, the jet engine crashes into Donnie's bedroom and kills him. Then the FAA arrives and transports the engine away.

They take it to a warehouse, and then in the dead of night, when nobody's around and the warehouse is empty of people, a localized portal seems to appear by itself within the warehouse.

The portal sucks in the jet engine to god knows where, another dimension or whatever, and leaves everything else in the warehouse untouched.

The jet engine disappears from the world as quietly and surreptitiously as it appeared into it, and "normalcy" is kinda restored to the primary universe. And Donnie still remains dead unfortunately.

And you might also be able to establish a "mystery background mythos" to the setting of Donnie Darko based on this.

>Decades ago (almost four decades by now), a detached jet engine crashed into a quiet suburban neighborhood of Middlesex, Virginia, killing 16-year-old Donald Darko in his own bedroom.

>No corresponding plane missing an engine was ever found, and the source of the engine was never identified.

>The night after it crashed, the engine mysteriously vanished from the possession of the Federal Aviation Administration without a trace.

I was thinking about Donnie Darko and suddenly started wondering if there might be a little joke hidden in Kitty Farmer’s name.

Kitty Farmer is basically the person who brings Jim Cunningham’s ideology into the school. She shows his videos to the students, teaches them his whole “Love and Fear” thing, and is completely convinced that Cunningham is a good influence on the kids.

So I started reading her name as “Kitty Farmer” = someone farming the kids.

Not literally, obviously, but in the sense that she is unknowingly cultivating these kids within Cunningham’s ideology and helping give him access to them. She thinks she is educating and helping them, while actually helping Cunningham influence them.

And the irony becomes even darker after Cunningham is exposed. She still refuses to believe that he is a bad person and goes so far as to defend him and campaign for him.

So you have:

Jim Cunningham → Kitty Farmer → the kids

And Kitty is “farming” the kids for Cunningham without even realizing what she is helping to cultivate.

I haven't been able to find anyone else making this specific connection, and I obviously have no idea if Richard Kelly actually intended the name this way. It could just be a coincidence.

But considering how many little details and names in Donnie Darko seem deliberately chosen, I thought it was an interesting possibility.

Has anyone else ever noticed this or seen it discussed somewhere?

hi people! i just watched this movie for the first time and LOVED IT (im really late to the party i know), and this is probably something that’s been said a million times before, but i feel like the end of this movie could imply that there’s a donnie out there trapped in a time loop??

so the end of the movie shows that somehow the tangent universe leaves some amount of a subconscious emotional residue on the people affected by donnie in the 28 days he was supposed to be dead. the beginning of the movie also establishes that donnie’s schizophrenic symptoms did not begin on october second.

it’s implied that it’s not until donnie enters the tangent universe, however, that donnie begins to hallucinate frank specifically. this fake frank is clearly shown to already have had his eye shot out, even before donnie knows that frank is a real person! i think this is maybe because the film we watch isn’t the first time donnie’s gone through the events in the tangent universe, and his hallucinations are able to latch onto the subconscious remnants from killing frank the first time.

i think that if you take the quantum immortality theory - which IIRC says that every time you have a close encounter with death your conscious experience splits off into a parallel universe in which you survive - that would mean at the end of the movie when donnie is crushed by the engine and dies, his consciousness would be transported back to the tangent universe in which frank wakes him up and saves his life, dooming him to repeat his final 28 days forever.

but there’s still a question i can’t figure out if this is even remotely true. HOW DID FRANK GET THERE THE FIRST TIME? was it even frank who woke donnie up in the first run of the loop, or something/someone else altogether?

anyway, this movie was fucking awesome and i will definitely be giving it another watch in the near future!

I recently rewatched the movie again after years of not watching it, and I laughed to myself because I remember when I was younger I used to have the biggest crush on Donnie.

Just thought I’d see if anyone else shared this experience 😂