Donnie Darko
I’ve found that expertly crafted horror films often utilize two fears that work together to heighten each other. John Carpenter's The Thing plays with paranoia and isolation because not only do the characters not know who’s real and who’s the monster, but they’re completely cut off from the outside world by the expansive tundra of Antarctica; The Blair Witch Project places its characters in an isolated, disorienting environment while they are pursued by the unknown; and Invasion of the Body Snatchers takes place in an urban environment, but ramps up the paranoia to the nth degree by inducing it with a monster from space (that’s three fears: paranoia, being hunted, the unknown). There is one fear that is seldom used in horror—films, novels, or other narratives—because by its very nature, it is difficult to portray. That would be the fear of nothingness, of the abyss, of nonexistence. You see the narrative engineering problem here, don’t you? How do you tell a story about something that doesn’t exist? The 2001 film Donnie Darko accomplishes this by presenting us with a person, an entirely fleshed-out, three-dimensional young man, and then removing him and making us feel the void left by his absence.
In the film, Donnie attends a school that I don’t believe is ever directly called Catholic, but the implication is certainly that it’s a Catholic high school (a former teacher was a nun, for example). The logic of the film actually follows some arguments of St Augustine, in particular the idea of evil versus privation. In short, being is good. In fact, God, the ultimate good, is being itself (Exodus 3:14). Therefore, evil is only the imperfection of a thing that is. The ultimate evil, it follows, would be the absence of all existence. From a narrative perspective, an audience will not look at a blank screen and be disturbed by the absence of a character. Instead, writer and director Richard Kelly knew he had to first create the character and then show the nothingness that he becomes.
This existential dread is paired with the fear of insanity. Donnie is convinced that he’s seeing Frank, that Frank is real, and that a giant bunny rabbit really did tell him that the world is coming to an end. His therapist, Dr. Thurman, believes he’s a paranoid schizophrenic with daylight hallucinations, his mind wildly trying to make sense of a scary, threatening world around him. Donnie believes he can travel through time. But who’s right? A casual observer might say Donnie. A more worldly cinephile might say Dr. Thurman. The cinefreak would say it doesn’t matter, and that’s the point of the film.
Donnie Darko should not be mistaken for a nihilistic film. Richard Kelly isn’t saying that nothing matters, that we’re all a bunch of meat puppets in a random meaningless universe. Quite the opposite, in fact. The horror of the film comes from Donnie’s death in the first act (in the parallel timeline) and the reversal of all of the events which we had previously watched. It could have been a misstep. The film could have ended with a cliché “it was all a dream” sentiment, but instead it sticks the landing by showing the traces of the abandoned story: Frank designs the rabbit mask and rubs his eye, foreshadowing the bullet wound that will never come, and Gretchen and Rose stare at each other and feel a connection through a dead boy only one of them knew.
The film reminds me of an old episode of the original Twilight Zone series called “And When the Sky Was Opened,” which uses the same storytelling technique to show its audience the horror of nothing, the horror of not existing. The premise of the episode is that three pilots were flying an experimental aircraft on a mission into space, the aircraft briefly went missing, then crash-landed back on Earth. All three men survived, but one by one, they disappear and no one seems to remember them ever existing. Reality changes around the remaining crew members. The first astronaut goes missing after he calls his parents and they claim they don’t have a son. When he finally vanishes, the newspaper article about the return of the three crew members now reports the return of only two.
I have yet to encounter a source that directly links Richard Kelly to this episode, having taken it as inspiration or planting a creative seed, although even the title is a line of dialogue in Donnie Darko. As Dr. Thurman says when Donnie sees Frank in his hypnotic trance, “If the sky were to suddenly open up, there would be no law, there would be no rule; there would only be you and your memories.” Reminiscent of the Twilight Zone episode, in which the surviving crew members are the only ones who have any recollection of their missing friends.
Kelly also took the Hitchcock approach to building tension by letting the air out. Although the film is disturbing on an existential level and leaves its viewers wondering what is and what is not, it also has its humorous moments. The teen angst and crass conversations between Donnie and his friends create some laugh-out-loud scenes, like the conversation about the smurf orgy and Samantha’s question, “What’s a fuck-ass?” Not only do these moments lighten the mood, but they turn Donnie and his world into a vivid cinematic creation, and make his absence so much more pronounced at the film’s ending.
I know the film also has a director’s cut which is about twenty minutes longer, but I believe the theatrical cut is the better film. Although I enjoyed a couple of the deleted scenes, especially the date night conversation between Donnie’s parents, the majority of the extra material shed light on the illusions that the theatrical cut flawlessly executed. Creativity desperately needs boundaries and limitations. These sometimes come in the form of budget constraints, and sometimes in the form of runtime limits. The intrigue around Donnie Darko is created by its mystery, and the director’s cut explains too much of the mystery, going so far as to include excerpts from Roberta Sparrow’s in-movie book The Philosophy of Time Travel. These details interest me, which is why they should remain out of the film.
In addition to the existential dread the film manages to impart to its audience, it also brings into question the nature of free will. Certainly I would argue that Donnie had the ability to make choices in the film, but what is the purpose of those choices if they still end with his death on October 2nd? If our fates are decided from the beginning of time, then to what extent do we have free will? Do we become any more free if the choices we make are erased and the timeline to which they belong no longer exists? And if we do not have free will, then what difference would our existence make? Because Donnie transported the jet engine back in time to his own room, would any lack of free will lie within ourselves? That’s a plethora of ideas to ponder as the credits roll.
Even though Richard Kelly has been likened to an early-career Christopher Nolan, unlike many of Nolan’s films, Donnie Darko does not provide answers upon a second or third viewing. Although it poses myriad questions, it eludes answers, which could tinge the entire film with a nihilistic patina were it not for the devastation that we feel alongside the rest of the Darko family when Donnie’s body is wheeled out of the house on a gurney. We do not feel as though nothing was lost. We do not shrug our shoulders at the meaninglessness of the universe. We are haunted by emptiness with the loss of Donnie. We know that he has gone laughing into the abyss and we sense its vacuous aftermath.
Donnie Darko has remained since its release a cult classic, but the cinematic craftsmanship of the film along with the depth of the story warrants wider reviewings (or viewings for those who have never seen it). It’s a movie that belongs on any Halloween movie list as not just some flick to turn on, but as a film that demands attention, discussion, and careful contemplation as the final credits roll and we are left asking ourselves if we too might be consumed by the abyss.
Comments