donnie darko

It's safe to say that pandering to '80s nostalgia has gone mainstream. Everything from TV shows (The Goldbergs) to streaming events (Stranger Things) to pizza commercials (Ferris Buehler lived in Chicago, people, he would never order from Dominos!) is coated with day-glo residue of pop culture references and one-hit wonders. Released in 2001, well before the retro resurgence was even due to arrive, Donnie Darko uses the '80s as a colorful backdrop for its story of a troubled teen on the edge of full-blown paranoid schizophrenia...who also holds the fate of the world in his hands.

Or not.

The beauty of director Richard Kelly's film is that it doesn't hand out easy answers for its interconnected theories of time travel, spiritual plans, invisible friends and intangible jellyfish sprouting out of everyone's chest. It's a sort of sci-fi-afterschool-special that manages to treat mental illness with some real emotional weight and also get a laugh or two.

Set in a Castle Rock-style suburbia full of quirky neighbors and oddball students, the Darko family is an island of sanity in a world gone mad. Yet, ironically, middle child Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) is emotionally unbalanced and socially awkward. Things only get worse when visions of a costumed rabbit (named Frank) interrupt his sleep, warning him of a 28-day countdown until the end of the world. The new girl in school (Jena Malone) provides some romantic distraction, but even her fate seems wrapped up in Donnie's theory of impending disaster. Is he hooked into some metaphysical information pipeline...or merely an imaginative psychotic break?

Premiering at Sundance, Donnie Darko brings along a lot of hipster indie baggage. Drew Barrymore (also an executive producer on the film) plays a too-cool-for-school English teacher who gets sacked for challenging her students while slow motion scenes play out to alternative hits from the likes Echo & The Bunnymen and Tears for Fears, interrupting the action like a Greek chorus. Even the Smurfs get name-dropped. But Kelly only uses these elements as decoration. Underneath it all is the disturbingly tragic profile Donnie's broken mind and its effect on world around him.

Kelly, making his feature-directing debut, shoots with a confidence he never quite recaptured in subsequent films. And he lucks into a real humdinger of a cast, including Gyllenhaal, his sister Maggie, Patrick Swayze, Noah Wyle and a handful of before-they-were-stars bit players. As good as Gyllenhaal is - and he's very good - it's Mary McDonnell as Donnie's mother who delivers some of the most heartbreaking scenes, torn between her unconditional love for her son while recognizing the danger he poses to himself and others.

Donnie Darko is an addictively puzzling film. And Arrow Films new Blu-ray / DVD limited edition revisits it with a brand-new 4K transfer and gobs of extras to help you dig deeper. It starts with the usual trailers, TV spots, storyboards and archive featurettes (mostly carried over from previous editions) then gets real with the Deus Ex Machina documentary, production diaries, more archive interviews from cast and crew, three full audio commentaries, B-roll footage, twenty deleted and alternate scenes (with Kelly commentary) plus Kelly's 1996 short film, The Goodbye Place. Spready across 4-discs, the biggest perk is still probably having the theatrical and director's cut (which adds close to 30-minutes) in the same set with a spiffy new restoration. If you snatch it up quick you also get a collectible book with in-depth interviews, stills and promotional material.