Highschooler Donnie is plagued by visions of a giant evil rabbit who orders him to commit acts of violence and predicts the impending end of the world.
In this iconic meditation on time, mind and death, Jack Gyllenhaal plays Donnie Darko, a teen with suspected Schizophrenia. Although this leads to difficult consequences (school flooding, unexplainable vandalism) he is curious to explore what his mind tells him cannot be real. When he starts seeing Frank, a young man dressed in a macabre bunny rabbit suit, he questions the foundations of his life and starts to look into the possibility of time travel. However, this is one unhappy bunny, as he predicts the world will end in 28 days. During one of these "bunny suit" sightings a jet engine crashes through the roof into his room. Luckily, Donnie's hallucinations had taken him sleep walking, preventing his death.
This film is a perfect exercise in original story telling and intelligent, satisfying plot. The way the story bends and shifts just like the time holes Donnie is so fascinated with is an uncomfortable experience, but always stays the good side of uncomfortable. Jake Gyllenhaal is both haunting and magnetic as the troubled title lead, but doesn't eclipse the strong supporting cast Drew Barrymore, Maggie Gyllenhaal (Jake's real life sister) and, in a rather odd choice of roles, Patrick Swayze, who plays obnoxious author Jim Cunningham. Of course, this surreal lamentation could be accused of being pretentious nonsense, but a closer look will show it never abandons effective emotion for showy intelligence. It marries the two together seamlessly.
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