Donnie Darko - Okay

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne
Director: Richard Kelly
Runtime: 1 hour, 53 minutes
Drama | Sci-Fi | Thriller | 2001

The synopsis of this movie is a teenager (Jake Gyllenhaal, title role) hallucinates a man in a rabbit suit who then gets him to do these horrible things around town. It’s also about the “philosophy of time travel” which Donnie thinks he is doing, and just might be. I think the overall concept of this film is interesting and I did like how the entire thing came together in the end at the old lady’s house. I didn’t however understand the ending… but I do have some ideas on to why that happened.

I wasn’t a fan of the filming style of this movie. I felt like the filmmakers were trying to go for a movie filmed in the 80s when it was really filmed in the early 2000s and that just didn’t work. I’ve never been a fan of “blurry” filmography even though I’m sure it has a purpose in the filmmakers eyes.

I thought Jake Gyllenhaal was good in this movie, played the angst teenager perfectly. Funny story, I tried to watch this movie last week when I was supposed to, but when I saw him lying in the middle of the road all I could think about is how much I loved The Day After Tomorrow… so we watched that instead and it was great. I liked the fact that Maggie Gyllenhaal, his actual sister, played his sister in this movie. And I love Jena Malone, particularly in the Hunger Games movies, but she’s good in this too alongside Gyllenhaal.

When David gave me this movie he said I was going to hate it, so that really made me not want to watch it. Well, I didn’t hate it, but it’s not something I would want to watch again. I thought the plot was good and the acting was good, but I felt like the thing dragged on. I know the run time is less that 2 hours, but it felt like so much more than that for some reason. I’ll give it an “Okay” rating as long as no one dresses up as that ugly bunny again. (2.5/5)