Now available on DVD
Cast:
Daveigh Chase as Sam
Briana Evigan as Corey
James Lafferty as Iraq Jack
Ed Westwick as Randy
Walter Platz as Frank
John Hawkes as Phil
Directed by Chris Fisher
Review:
This is the hardest review I have ever had to write. Worship it or hate it, Donnie Darko is a tough act to follow. In fact, like many of you, I never even imagined a sequel would ever be attempted, much less conceived. The original is hard to decipher the first time around, but sit through it again and you’ll see how everything works and how the universe of the film is actually very carefully laid out. Unfortunately, this film is not so carefully laid out or as memorable as its predecessor. It’s also not as cautious with its plotting, and the lazy storytelling gets in the way of our search for the deeper meanings, of which there are none.
I’ve got to hand it to the people behind this movie. It takes major balls to remake Donnie Darko. Not that it was a perfect film by any means, but just the fact that it was a complex science fiction film that told its tale well within the confines of one movie and developed a rabid and loyal cult around itself. I mentioned this was going to be a hard one to write, so for the sake of content I will assume you know the original film fairly well. I will make frequent references to the original so bare with me. Another reason this is going to be a hard one is that the film obviously contains some surprises that are inherently part of the plot but will spoil things for the eager viewer. Don’t ask me to explain the film to you, but I certainly don’t want to ruin the parts I do know.
The star of the follow-up is Samantha Darko (S. Darko, get it?), Donnie’s little sister who was ten when her brother was killed by the stray jet engine. The role is reprised by Daveigh Chase who played Samantha Darko in the original, except now she is nearly eighteen and gorgeous. Her and her friend Corey (played by the also gorgeous Briana Evigan from the upcoming remake Sorority Row and my all-time fave Step Up 2: The Streets) are on a road trip. Their plan is to get jobs working at the club owned by Corey’s father, but their car breaks down in the desert town of Conejo Springs, Utah just in time to catch the end of the world.
In this film the roles are reversed. Samantha is not Donnie, she is Frank the bunny ghost. Donnie, in the case of this movie, is played by a guy named Iraq Jack, a Desert Storm vet who returned with a messed-up head. One night he is sitting on his windmill looking at stuff or whatever when Sam appears to him. She is ghostly-blue and bloody and she warns him in the familiar distorted-robot-voice that something will happen to him. She escorts him off of the windmill and a meteorite suddenly sails down from the heavens and smashes it to bits. Now we have our “Tangental Universe”, which is (if you know the laws behind the original) a bizarro timeline that can only lead to the end of the world somehow. Jack is told that the world will cease to exist in 4 days, 17 hours, 26 minutes, and 31 seconds. A shorter period than the original’s twenty-eight days, and yet this film feels like it drags along more.
Sam wakes up then, fully alive, and we find out that she has sleepwalking fits. She is also suicidal and depressed, but her story is not Donnie’s story, it’s Frank’s story. This change in the mechanics of the Darko world makes the film feel more random. We join Sam as she wanders through town making friends with a dorky guy who bought the meteorite and then she goes to a party and then she walks around and then they do other things that are of no interest. The real heart of the film is Jack and he is gone for most of the time! I feel the filmmakers felt this lack of energy too, and threw in a subplot about kidnapped children, which is sadly never wrapped up or solved. They also throw in a mini-Tangent Universe story that was totally unnecessary and really only served to pad out the film. This portion I’m referring to happens about 45 minutes in and has one good surprise in it, but will ultimately have you scratching your head.
Even though I am holding back to be fair to those who truly want to experience this film, there is not much going on in the film to begin with. The end has to be the worst offender, though. In the original it all makes sense and it all gets wrapped up in a neat bow. At the end of this film, we aren’t sure if the end of the world will be brought about by some kind of alien virus from space bent on infecting people or meteorites demolishing the planet! And how would Iraq Jack’s death stop an alien invasion or a meteor shower? The last few minutes of the original when the characters wake up from there sleep and feel that something amazing has happened is mimicked here, but it becomes more of a WTF moment than a blast of realization as the meaning becomes apparent. Why? Because there is no meaning or purpose to anything we have just seen. None of it adds up!
The problem with this film is that there is nothing really going on and in the end nothing is really solved or made better. Just like It’s a Wonderful Life, we saw how one man’s life made a difference in the original Darko. In this one, we get no kind of payoff at all because we never spent any time with Iraq Jack and we never understand what his sacrifice means to the world as a whole. This is the film’s biggest flaw, because without an epic reason, the Darko mold doesn’t work. Instead it just makes for boring, pretentious, and really aggravating cinema. Imagine the original with Donnie barely in it!
The DVD’s loaded with deleted scenes, a 15-minute making-of featurette, a music video by character actor extraordinaire John Hawkes about Utah, featuring the cast and crew’s thoughts on their shooting location, and a commentary track. On that track, during a bizarre portion at the end of the film when all the characters are looking up at the sky, director Chris Fisher mentions that after a screening the audience asked what exactly the characters were doing. He tells us then that the audience “didn’t get it”. Well, I guess I didn’t get it because I had the same question, and I have a feeling there really is nothing to get. He tells us this is a film that needs to be deciphered to be understood, but I don’t have time for that because I have a ton of crap on Tivo. So if you loved Donnie Darko then stay away because this film will do nothing but anger you. If you hated the original, then you’re probably not planning on watching this movie anyway.
Call me crazy but wouldn’t a sequel seriously negate Donnie’s sacrifice at the end of the first film? Or maybe shit like this happens all the time, and if you put it that way then doesn’t the original lose some of its magic? We don’t always need to be spoon-fed, but is it too much to ask for our mysteries to have a little substance?
