Ultimate 2000s Blogathon: Donnie Darko (2001) by Often Off Topic

We’re so close to the end of week two of the Ultimate 2000s Blogathon! Joining the blogathon today is Allie from Often Off Topic. Allie is a regular blogathon participant here at DMR and was super eager to be a part of the Ultimate Decades Blogathon again this year. Allie is a new mom who still finds time to post regularly on her blog, whether it’s movie reviews, Thursday Movie Picks, or her Going Off Topic segment. Head over to her site to check it all out! For this blogathon, Allie reviewed one of her favorite thrillers from the 2000s: Donnie Darko.

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The 2000s is such a difficult decade for me to pick my favourite movie from. I’d finally reached an age in the 00s where I was watching movies for myself, and I’ve seen so many! Once I really made myself choose a single movie however the choice was clear, it had to be Donnie Darko (2001).

If you’ve been living under a rock since then, Donnie Darko is a fantastically weird Thriller/Sci-Fi movie that demands to be watched at least twice. Teenage me had found herself obsessed with Jake Gyllenhaal, and spent hours on eBay tracking down second-hand copies of his movies, a trend that still very much lives on in me but has been made much easier thanks to the likes of platforms like Netflix. I couldn’t have been older than 14 at the time and I was terrified of the movie, but found it fascinating.

Donnie is a troubled teen with a history of violence. He takes medication but has recently stopped of his own accord. One night he sleepwalks and meets Frank, an eery-looking rabbit who warns him that in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds, the world will end. That same night, a jet engine crashes into the Darko’s house, destroying Donnie’s bedroom. Had he been home in bed, he would be been killed.

Donnie Darko is the movie that sparked my love and curiosity for dark and weird movies with endings that leave you with more questions than you started with. Donnie himself is a role that only Jake Gyllenhaal could pull off, and he does it so well! I haven’t seen it for a few years now, but off the top of my head, these are what I remember to be my favourite things about it:

• “Oh please tell me Elizabeth, how exactly does one suck a f**k?!”
• Those stoners talking about Smurfette. A conversation I didn’t really appreciate until I was a bit older.
• Time travel!
• The moral issue of finding a wallet on the ground. You have to take into account the whole spectrum of human emotion!
• Donnie throwing shade on Jim Cunningham – it was hilarious.
• “I made a new friend…”
• Did I also mention Jake Gyllenhaal’s in it?

It wasn’t until reasonably recently that I learned a sequel was made, S. Darko (2009). A quick search of it on IMDB tells me that it’s currently rated #89 on IMDB’s Bottom Rated Movies list. Ouch. If you know me though, you know you can probably expect to see a review of it on my blog fairly soon. I can’t help myself. Any excuse to watch the original again too, I guess!

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If you’ve missed any of the blogathon entries, you can find a list of them all here.