Cult movie Donnie Darko was released 22 years ago – and fans are still debating what the enjoyably head-scratching, Jake Gyllenhaal-starring drama is all about.
Is it a teen movie, a 1980s period piece, a musing on life and death – or a sci-fi film about time-travel? Writer/director Richard Kelly, who was just 25 years old when he made the movie, prefers audiences to decide, but he did tell the Los Angeles Times in 2001: "I wanted to write a film that pushed the envelope by combining science fiction with a coming-of-age tale."
In the last two decades, it has become much more than that. While Donnie Darko started life as a box-office flop (partly because it was released just after 9/11 in the US, when no-one was going to cinemas), it later became a word-of-mouth hit on DVD and at midnight screenings. It is now regarded as a cult classic – and one that still has viewers debating the ending – and discussing it at length online.
Lady Gaga revealed she was a big fan of the movie when she sat down with Jake Gyllenhaal as part of Variety's Actors On Actors series in 2022.
"I don't want to lie and tell you I haven't seen it so many times," she told Gyllenhaal. "In the world of music, but in fashion as well, Donnie Darko, it's religion. It really is. And if you know your shit, you know Donnie Darko."
Unfortunately the singer didn't ask Gyllenhaal to explain what the movie is all about during their chat, and director Kelly himself admits it can be a puzzle, saying in the DVD commentary that "this film kinda does need Cliffs Notes," while star Gyllenhaal wrote in the introduction to The Donnie Darko Book: "What is Donnie Darko about? I have no idea."
If you've seen Donnie Darko (and if you have not, we strongly recommend you watch it before reading any further as there are huge spoilers ahead) you'll remember the basics – it is set in October 1988, in a Virginia town called Middlesex. Teenager Donnie (Gyllenhaal) lives there with his parents and sisters (the eldest of whom, Elizabeth, is played by Gyllenhaal's real-life sister Maggie).
At the start of the movie, Donnie sleepwalks out of his house and meets a figure in a freakish-looking rabbit costume named Frank who tells him the world will end in exactly 28 days, six hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds.
Watch Donnie Darko on Prime Video
When Donnie wakes up and returns home, he discovers a jet engine from a plane has fallen from the sky and crashed into his bedroom, crushing the bed where he should have been sleeping. Over the following days, he continues to see Frank, and during those hallucinations Donnie begins to carry out criminal acts under the rabbit's influence, such as flooding the school and burning down the house of local self-help guru Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze).
Donnie also meets an old woman, nicknamed Grandma Death by locals, and discovers she is a former nun named Roberta Sparrow who wrote a book called The Philosophy of Time Travel (that bit is very important).
Her theories tie in with Donnie's own visions, and during a tragic evening spent with his friend Gretchen (Jena Malone), he realises that the end of the world Frank prophesied is just hours away.
Seeing a vortex has formed over his house, Donnie drives to the edge of town, and watches as a plane gets caught in it and one of the engines is ripped away. The last 28 days rewind, and Donnie wakes up in his bedroom just as the jet engine falls from the sky.
So what does it all mean?
"I felt it was an interesting story about growing up," Jake Gyllenhaal told Entertainment Tonight in 2001. "It was a different manifestation of it, but it was the anti-teen movie."
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the movie's debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January, Gyllenhaal shared a photo of the script on Instagram, and wrote: "Pulled out my script and some artefacts from Donnie Darko... It's a film that changed my life and my career and it's been unreal to watch this story find afterlives with new audiences and new generations, and yet, what Donnie said to Roberta Sparrow is still true: 'There is so much to look forward to.'"
He also acknowledged that, 20 years on, it's still a tricky movie to understand.
"Thank you to all the fans who've come up to me over the years with that confused look on their faces and asked me: 'What the f**k is Donnie Darko about??'"
"Happy 20th Donnie! Let's keep confusing people. Here's to 20 more."
While many people are as confused as Jake by a plot that also features a budding romance for Donnie, his younger sister's performance of Duran Duran's ‘Notorious’ with the Sparkle Motion dance troupe, and the revelation that Cunningham has a hoard of child porn in a secret room at his house – there are a handful of theories about what it all means.
It is implied in the film that Donnie is schizophrenic, so some fans believe the events of the movie are actually Donnie experiencing an episode of mental illness. Other viewers think the entire movie may all be a dream – that old chestnut – and that all the events that take place are Donnie dreaming them in the moments before he is crushed to death by the jet engine (Kelly's response to this theory: "Life could be a dream").
More intriguing is the idea that Donnie is being shown the future by Frank – a sort of Ghost of Christmas Future in a rabbit costume, if you will. Watch the film with this in mind and it sort of makes sense.
Frank shows Donnie the next 28 days of his life and at the end, Donnie chooses not to actually live them because he has seen so many tragic things will happen. However, it doesn't explain why The Philosophy of Time Travel book is mentioned (or the strange Abyss-like vapour trails Donnie can see, leading him towards things) and the theory unravels when you ponder it too much.
Another possibility is that Donnie is actually dead throughout the entire film. "I don't have an answer to that question," Kelly told NME when asked about the fan theory in 2016. "I think the film argues that life and death can perhaps co-exist, that time is not necessarily a purely linear thing."
His reply was a hint of things to come, and when Kelly added deleted scenes for the Director's Cut of the movie, including pages from Roberta Sparrow's fictitious The Philosophy of Time Travel book, the additions helped to explain more of this theory.
"I wrote [Roberta's] time travel book," Kelly revealed to Horror Cult Films in 2016 when the Director's Cut came out. "I'm not the kind of person who puts something like that in a movie without figuring out what's inside it. I had to figure it out," he explained.
The added pages he wrote do provide an explanation as to what on earth is going on, and they are reproduced at the unofficial website if you want to take a look.
The theory in Roberta's/Kelly's pages is that there is a Primary Universe and a Tangent Universe, which are physically connected by a wormhole or vortex. Donnie Darko takes place in the Tangent Universe, which is the same as the Primary one with one exception – the jet engine, which is known as the Artefact.
The Artefact has to be sent back to its own universe within 28 days, or the Primary Universe will collapse. A Living Receiver – in this case, Donnie – is given special powers to be able to do this (the scene near the end with Donnie looking at the vortex from afar is actually showing him using telekinesis to return the engine to the correct universe, according to the director's DVD commentary), while people known as the Manipulated Living (characters in Donnie's life, such as his family) and Manipulated Dead (Gretchen and Frank, who both die in the Tangent Universe) aid him in his mission.
Or, to put it another way, everything that happens to Donnie in the movie is manipulating him to the point where he will save the Primary Universe, even though it will lead to his own death there.
For example, rabbit Frank persuades him to flood the school, which leads to Donnie bumping into Gretchen on the way home. They become a couple, and her death soon after causes him to shoot the man responsible – a man named Frank who has a rabbit costume because it is Halloween – thus creating Frank, the manipulated dead man. Donnie then realises he can 'save' Gretchen by sending the jet engine though a vortex, rewinding time and erasing the history that led to her death.
Meanwhile, the final scenes in the movie are of people such as Jim Cunningham and Frank in the Primary Universe being haunted by dreams of what happened to them in the Tangent Universe (Cunningham, whose child porn stash has not been discovered in this universe, is nonetheless wracked with guilt at his actions, for example).
So that clears it all up, then.
Well, not exactly – when the Director's Cut was released in 2016, not everyone was thrilled with the news that the mysteries of Donnie Darko had been solved.
It was included in a Flavorwire list of "10 Director's Cuts That Are Worse Than The Original" while critic Germain Lussier wrote that the added pages "remove some of the wonder that a viewer had in 2001 watching the theatrical cut.
In fact, they prevent the film from being a text that the viewer could read into whatever they wanted… in this version of the film, you are almost forced to put very specific pieces into a singular puzzle. And it feels less magical as a result."
Kelly, however, refuses to confirm that Director's Cut version is the only way to interpret his film – it is just one way to enjoy it. In his interview with the NME at the time of its release, he teased other theories, including Donnie's adventures being a hallucination, by saying: "I don't have an absolute definition of hallucination, I believe everything in the film is real to a certain extent, but what is the nature of reality?"
Of course, it is most likely that the tangent universe theory is the one he had in mind when he made the movie, and Kelly hints that it is worth considering when you revisit Donnie Darko.
"The tangent universe is certainly the first chapter from the prologue of The Philosophy of Time Travel," he said to NME, "so I believe there's a lot more to that book than meets the eye."
"I tend to believe that Roberta Sparrow was on to something."
Perhaps all will be revealed one day if Kelly makes a sequel to Donnie Darko – something he hinted at back in 2021 (there is an unofficial 2019 sequel, S Darko, that Kelly had nothing to do with, and it is not good).
In an interview with Coming Soon, he talked about the possibility of a follow-up, saying: "I'm probably not allowed to say anything more than there has been an enormous amount of work completed. I'm hopeful that we might get to explore that world in a very big and exciting way. But we'll see what happens. But there has been a lot of work done."
Donnie Darko is available to watch on Prime Video, iTunes and other digital retailers.
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Freelance film & TV writer, Digital Spy
Critic and writer Jo Berry has been writing about TV and movies since she began her career at Time Out aged 18. A regular on BBC Radio, Jo has written for titles including Empire, Maxim, Radio Times, OK!, The Guardian and Grazia, is the author of books including Chick Flicks and The Parents’ Guide to Kids’ Movies.
She is also the editor of website Movies4Kids. In her career, Jo has interviewed well-known names including Beyonce, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Kiefer Sutherland, Tom Cruise and all the Avengers, spent many an hour crushed in the press areas of award show red carpets. Jo is also a self-proclaimed expert on Outlander and Brassic, and completely agrees that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
