Another cheerful one this week! Donnie Darko. A month in the life of a troubled teenager, dealing
with predictions of the end of the world (28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12
seconds…) given to him by a giant, sinister black rabbit who appears
sporadically, seemingly out of no where.
In the past, horror films and I have not had a great
relationship. I never watched any as a kid. When I finally did, I didn’t sleep
properly for two months. I spent most of my nights convinced I was about to be
possessed by an evil demon holding a grudge; or a member of my family (possessed
by said demon), was about to walk in, stare at me expressionlessly for a couple
of hours while I slept, and then kill me (I bet you can guess what film I’m
talking about). Since then I’ve avoided any kind of film even vaguely
associated with horror. I simply can’t stand a film with a supernatural being
that appears unexpectedly with no other purpose but to needlessly frighten the
audience- and by ‘the audience’ I really do mean, me.
Like I said, Donnie
Darko is a film about a terrifying, seemingly supernatural black rabbit who appears
sporadically, seemingly out of nowhere. Whoops.
But if I’m really going to see all the ‘must-see’ films I
can in 100 weeks, the horror genre has to feature somewhere. I needed to
confront my fears. To help, I enlisted my friend, who’s a horror film junkie, to
assist in my scary movie rehabilitation.
So, horror movie team assembled, popcorn popping in the
microwave, we sat down and watched it. And actually it wasn’t that bad. Scary
in parts, yet not completely traumatic. Complex, yet not confusing. Fantastical, yet so tantalisingly
plausible.
The first thing that struck me about Donnie Darko was how different it was to my initial expectations. I
thought, going on what I had seen in the official trailer, that the film would
focus on Donnie and his visions of the hellish rabbit-man (called Frank). But it
is so much more than that. Sure, Frank was always lurking in the back of your
mind, or, as my over-active imagination told me: (and is telling me, even as I
write this) “he’s behind you”. But Frank is essentially a sub-plot in a
cleverly crafted story. Other storylines in the film rival for our attention: who is Grandma
Death? What is the Philosophy of Time Travel? Who is Gretchen? (and will Donnie
ever get in her pants?) And most mysteriously of all, is Donnie acutally
mad?
So is that the secret to a good film? Blind sighting your
audience with a good trailer? Maybe. But what I enjoyed most about this film
was- for want of a better word- the unexpected twists. All the information you
could possibly need to explain this film is presented to you with absolute
transparency, but still you can’t predict what will happen. Frustratingly
enough, because I really do think you should watch this film, I can’t really
say anything more without giving it away.
What I can say is that this film has a terribly ambiguous ending;
which you will either find hopelessly incomplete or great food for thought. For
those who are looking for more concrete answers, there’s a lot of websites out
there that give you a plethora of different theories linking all the events of
the film together (fair warning- a lot of them have a soundtrack of Frank
saying “Wake up”, which scared the absolute bejesus out of me the first time I
looked at them).
Despite all this, I can’t really class Donnie Darko strictly as a horror film. Am I still jumping at loud
noises? Yes. Am I having trouble sleeping? A little, but that’s just the
memories of Paranormal Activity
coming back to haunt me. I feel like Donnie
Darko plays with your expectations of it to fall neatly into the horror
genre, and uses that prejudice to surprise you with this altogether more
satisfying story, that is scary, but not looking to frighten you for fear’s
sake. This is a very, very good film.
In summary, I survived my rebirth into the world of scary
films. Which is why next week, I’m going all out. It’s time to crack out Psycho.
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| A horror film? Scary rabbit anyway... |
NEXT WEEK- Psycho
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