It’s hard to believe that it’s almost been a decade since Donnie Darko came out. Richard Kelly’s cult classic…well, I don’t want to necessarily say that it changed cinema, that’s overdramatic. But it had a tremendous impact, whether you associate that with independent films or the cinemascape in general. I still remember my seventh-grade English teacher telling me to scope it, and seeing it for the first time about a year later, having no idea what the hell had happened after the credits rolled. Not in a bad way, of course. In a way that made me jump on the Internet right after and try to Google my questions out. I think Darko was the first film that made me do that, extend the viewing experience beyond the immediacy of the DVD player.
No matter how you remember the movie, you’ve probably seen it. It’s become a staple film for everyone now in their early twenties. So naturally, when it was announced that a spin-off movie entitled S. Darko would be made, it was met with a lot of skepticism. After all, we’re talking Donnie Darko here. You can’t just make a spin-off of Donnie Darko, can you?
Turns out, popular opinion was right. You simply can’t mess with Donnie Darko.
S. Darko focuses on the youngest Darko, Samantha, seven years after the events of Donnie Darko. Sam is travelling across the country with her friend Corey (why all these chicks have dude names is beyond me) when their car breaks down outside of some town whose name I do not remember – if you can’t tell, I don’t actually look up this stuff when I write reviews, like a real movie reviewer would probably do.
I’ll admit, I actually thought I might have gone into the movie with the wrong mentality at first. Not that I doubted it would be horrible, but because the two main characters – Sam and Corey – are hot as hell! Wow. I guess that’s kinda gross considering it’s the same girl who plays Sam in both Kelly’s 2001 film and this 2008 spin-off, but I don’t think many guys would disagree. The first half-hour of the movie was pretty much these two chicks walking around in cut-offs. Yikes!
Of course, then they try to introduce a plot, and it all goes to hell from there. Alright, here’s my thinking: if I’m making a spin-off of a cult classic and try to make it somewhat respectable, I don’t try to make so many obvious (erroneous, flawed or otherwise dumb) parallels between my spin-off and the original classic. And that’s exactly what this film did. It was like, oh, hey, this was in Kelly’s film, so let’s inexplicably slap it in here completely out of context! Just horrible. And while Kelly’s original was confusing, at least the puzzle pieces were there to be put together. This version is just a mess of missing pieces – it doesn’t make sense for the most part, and in the rare occasion where it does, it’s so damn inconsequential that you just don’t care. Basically, I wondered why anything in the movie ever had to happen in the first place. And if the end result of doing the exact same thing Donnie did in the original (yeah, literally, they just transpose Donnie’s fate from the first and plop it down in this one, with a resounding thud) still amounts to what it does…I mean, yeah, two hotties are saved so that’s always good. But what about the children?! The Reformist in me wonders if the scriptwriter even bothered to consider that this fate didn’t make everyone better. Not even close.
There are also inexplable suggestions of aliens and mutant rashes. Best not to get into those tangents, because it’s just more of what I wrote above: unnecessary things that are completely unexplained.
Um, if I had anything good to say about the movie, it’s that the acting was at least competent. Corey and Sam handled some weak roles. John Hawkes was in it. As a matter of fact, why was Hawkes in it? Hawkes is a great character actor. He was brilliant in Me, You and Everyone We Know, probably one of the better non-lead roles in American Gangster and a great counter-balance to Kenny Powers in HBO’s “Eastbound and Down.” Why would John Hawkes ever agree to do this? It pained me to see him in here. He’s better than that, much much better.
So it’s been a movie marathon kinda weekend, with finals ahead and all. This was easily the worst, but it would be the worst of a lot of marathons. I don’t even recommend this to Darko fans just curious to see how horrible it really is. It’s such a damn waste of time. It couldn’t even manage to be bad in a good way. It was just…bad.
Filed under: Movie Review, Movies, Trailer, Video
