Screening

About Donnie Darko

Before Stranger Things combined sci-fi, Spielbergian themes, and ’80s nostalgia, Richard Kelly set the the high-water mark with his debut feature, Donnie Darko, and unleashed the first cult classic of the new millennium. Donnie is a troubled high school student: in therapy, prone to sleepwalking, and beset by an imaginary friend (a six-foot rabbit named Frank) who tells him the world is going to end. Donnie has just 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds to navigate teenage life, narrowly avoid death, follow Frank’s maladjusted instructions, and try to maintain the space-time continuum. Donnie Darko combines an eye-catching, eclectic cast—pre-stardom Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, heartthrob Patrick Swayze, former child star Drew Barrymore, Oscar nominees Mary McDonnell and Katharine Ross, and television favorite Noah Wyle—and an evocative soundtrack of ’80s classics by Echo and the Bunnymen, Tears for Fears, and Duran Duran. [113 min; horror, thriller; English]

“Like gathering storm clouds, Donnie Darko creates an atmosphere of eerie calm and mounting menace… Stands as one of the most exceptional movies of 2001.” — Jean Oppenheimer, The New York Times

"Kelly is a supple and courageous storyteller, boldly free-associating as he mixes parody and satire with earnest psychodrama and coming up with plot points no one could anticipate." — Lisa Alspector, Chicago Reader

"Haunting and altogether exquisite." — Leslie Felperin, Sight & Sound

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