By the time I finally saw Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, a fascinating time travel story with superhero undertones, its cult status was already growing. In fact, I first saw the movie when the much-maligned Director's Cut was playing in theaters. Both versions (each with their own merits, although the theatrical cut is a little better) are wonderfully hypnotic, from the dreamy score to hazy, ethereal cinematography, and its time travel concepts are intriguing. Watching it in preparation for this review, it still holds up (two years short of a decade later); it withstands the extremely subjective theorizing the internet age has piled on top of it when similar films can't because it has such well-defined ideas. Now, Fox has decided it's time to cash in on the phenomenon with the extremely belated direct-to-video sequel S. Darko, which sends Donnie's sister Samantha (a returning Daveigh Chase) on a sci-fi tale of her own.
Obviously, the concept of sequels isn't something the movie industry invented, but there's a fascinating corporate science behind the way Hollywood creates franchises out of popular movies, and I also can't think of a single department or area of the filmmaking process that isn't (or shouldn't be) impacted by the fact that they're trying to do justice to a cinematic predecessor. Can you boil an original, hit film into a formula? I'll willingly admit to devoting way too much time on movie message boards (including DVDTalk's) weighing the pros and cons of various prequels and follow-ups,
because even when the answer is no (and it usually is), I still love seeing what new attempts filmmakers will make because it's fun to figure out what exactly they were thinking. And every once in awhile, you get something truly out of left field: an insane idea tied almost unwillingly to the foundation that's already been set down.
S. Darko is not out of left field. S. Darko just sits on the bench. One of the earliest signs of trouble in the movie's online trailer is the reappearance of creepy-looking rabbits and the Abyss-style time tendrils. Yes, there was a six-foot tall rabbit in Donnie Darko, but it wasn't because rabbits have any significance, but because there was a character inside the rabbit suit, and the suit belonged to the character. Yet this sequel, written by Nathan Atkins, skimps on the story in order to pack in as many rabbits, wormholes, hallucinations and prophecies as it can fit into 101 minutes, and it's sadly evident that Atkins and director Chris Fisher's surface understanding of the original is a problem before the opening credits even roll. The Philosophy of Time Travel even re-appears, and if you're playing at home, nobody in this movie should even have awareness, let alone possession of the book based on the original's plot development.
The rest of S. Darko seems to subscribe to the "bigger is better" motif of so many failed sequels. I don't want to ruin it if you're determined to watch it (the horror), but this time around, there are multiple time travelers. The problem with time traveling more than once in a linear fashion, however, is that whatever happens last would essentially negate the need for any other time travel. I see what they were going for (I suppose later events in the movie wouldn't happen without the first jump), but it only makes partial sense why things ultimately change. If I was to really get into Darko jargon (which you can find on Wikipedia if you need a helpful cheat sheet),
some of the Living Receivers are also Manipulated Dead, and vice versa, Artifacts seem basically ignored or mishandled and the Fourth Dimensional Construct is unclear. Some of these concepts are actually intriguing (in simple terms, the idea that Samantha would be the Frank of this story is clever), but the movie doesn't actually go anywhere with them.
Like nearly every sequel, though, one prime problem rears its head above all else, and that's unoriginality. Characters like Pastor John (played by Matthew Davis) are directly derivative of characters from the original movie, and the film's story doesn't go anyplace new. Director Fisher is also often blatantly incompetent. A car crash is clearly intended to catch the audience by as much surprise as the characters, but it just feels ineptly edited. Objects get sucked into wormholes for no reason other than it apparently being visually interesting to Fisher. He even stages a truly interminable attempt to recreate the "Mad World" montage from the end of the original film (if my eyes don't deceive me, he actually does this twice). Unlike Kelly's film, movie also seems to be directed specifically towards teenage girls, for whatever reason (maybe Fox had some demographic numbers to test?).
The cast isn't that great either. Daveigh Chase, the only returning cast member from the original, seems barely engaged by the material. Her performance is so quiet it almost doesn't register, and she just floats around like she's dreaming of a better project. Briana Evigan is just annoying as her best friend Corey; her character is poorly written (unexplainable, plot-convenient mood swings) and Evigan does nothing to make Corey more sympathetic. Meanwhile, Ed Westwick sulks in the background like an angry Calvin Klein model version of Jimmy Fallon, and the movie just wastes character actor John Hawkes, which is a crime even in a great movie. Only Jackson Rathbone,
as a local science nerd, makes any impression, but his character is let down by the script during the vaguely intriguing but poorly-written third act.
If you stuck S. Darko in a blender and stuck some short pieces on YouTube, it might look like a far more interesting movie than it really is. I remember being on those message boards and sticking up for this movie to an extent; I felt like someone could have taken Kelly's mythology and really run with it, which at least justified a potentially legitimate reason to exist. Now that I've seen the final product, Chris Fisher and Nathan Atkins certainly have some grand ideas for the movie (again, that intriguing but mishandled climax might have been an insane head trip in a better film), but they just don't understand Donnie Darko on either of two key levels: what happened in the movie and what it was that made it successful. Perhaps a third Donnie Darko will get it right.
The DVD
Fox, as they are wont to do, sent a screener disc in a paper sleeve, so I don't get to examine the details of the cover, which features one of the new bunny heads with a faded image of Samantha perched on the nose. The online version bears the distinct mark of Photoshop, I imagine the retail version will too. I'm also still disappointed that not only did they not go with the much better sounding Samantha Darko, but they've appended A Donnie Darko Tale to the end of the title to scare away the uninitiated.
The Video and Audio
Since this is a screener, I can't accurately judge the video and audio components of this disc, which are watermarked and poorly compressed, but when the film streets on May 12th, it should pack an anamorphic 1.78:1 widescreen presentation, Dolby Digital 5.1 English,
French and Spanish audio, English captions and French and Spanish subtitles.
The Extras
Fisher, Atkins and cinematographer Marvin V. Rush provide a feature-length audio commentary, and it's actually alright. They don't offer up any explanations that make the movie magically come together (it's more about the technical making of the movie than the thematic), but it's a reasonably informative chat.
Two featurettes are included. "The Making of S. Darko" (15:01) is a painful watch; it literally opens with several of the cast and crew explaining why it's such a bad idea to make a sequel to Donnie Darko. Rathbone suggests that when he heard it was a "continuation" instead of a "sequel" he became more willing to jump on board. Perhaps next time the script should play a part, no? Fisher even admits that he has a limited knowledge of Kelly's mythology. Really, the best thing I can say about it is that it actually features very few film clips. "Utah Too Much" (6:45) covers filming in Utah, based around John Hawkes performing a song he and some of the other cast (more charismatic than they are in the movie itself) and crew wrote by the same name. It's not really my kind of music, but you can't argue with more John Hawkes. You can't!
Six deleted scenes (06:04) consist mainly of girls being awful to one another, although the first one at least features some of the score, by Ed Harcourt, which is actually nice, for the most part. No commentary is included to explain why they were deleted.
Automatic trailers for Post Grad (Michael Keaton, what happened to you?), Notorious, Taken and Possession play when you put in the disc. From the menu, you can also watch trailers for The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Betrayed, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li and 12 Rounds (not Donnie Darko
, though...hmmm). The film's original trailer is also included.
The only thing missing from this disc are three viral videos that appeared on YouTube to promote the film. The first and third one weren't that great, but the second one was more entertaining than the film itself.
Conclusion
As a movie, S. Darko isn't very good, and as a sequel, it's slightly worse. Sadly, I bet there's better Donnie Darko fan fiction out there than this; fans of the original will be annoyed to see the concepts of the first film get hamfistedly misappropriated by a creative team that doesn't understand them. Only those who like torturing themselves with terrible sequels (like me!) should do anything but skip this stupid cash-in.
Please check out my other DVDTalk DVD and theatrical reviews here and my film blog The Following Preview here.
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