Donnie Darko

a lot like when i watched the batman (2022), donnie darko isn't technically a horror movie, but i still thought it was spooky enough to include it in spooktober 2025. i'm also really surprised at how long it's been since i've seen this movie (almost two years!), and it's still managed to stay in my top 4 the whole time i've had an account, which i think just really shows how much i love this movie and how well it speaks to me.
donnie darko is a hard watch for me. obviously, the whole time-travel thing can be confusing to someone on first watch, but this is my fourth or fifth watch, so i'm not talking about that. what i'm talking about is donnie himself. and i know this sounds really bad, but i relate to him. he feels like a failure to his parents, he does things that he doesn't want to do, his emotions are constantly up and down, and as i am around the same age as him that inevitably comes into play also.
maybe i'm just reading into it too much, but then again donnie darko is a movie meant to be read into, and thoroughly at that. it's very philosophical in a way, and everything about the plot just screams self-interpretation so loudly into your face it's a bit hard to ignore. the movie starts off with donnie mysteriously lying on the side of the road atop a mountain, and that immediately sets the tone that this is going to be a strange watch (and i also just think it's a great opening in general). i also have to mention the s-tier soundtrack, which puts is in the setting of the late eighties and goes really well with the rest of the movie.
i think the special thing about the movie, to me at least, is that i can confidently say i have never seen a movie like donnie darko, unlike the other movies in my top four. i've seen movies like tree of life, i've seen movies like into the spider-verse, and i've even seen movies like magnolia, but i can't say that i've ever seen a movie like this one, and i think the whole atmosphere of the movie really helps add to that. you won't know what i'm talking about unless you've actually seen it.
overall, this review was a bit scattered and stream-of-consciousness, but i was just trying to highlight all the best things and things i like the most about the movie! in my eyes, it definitely worth a watch.