S Darko. Yeah they really made it. If you liked Donnie Darko, you will hate this. If you never saw Donnie Darko, you will have absolutely no clue in hell whats going on in this movie because the filmmakers don't explain anything and assume everyone knows Donnie Darko like the back of their hand. And even if you know every last detail of the first film, understand tangent universes and own a copy of Roberta Sparrow's time travel book, you will be totally confused as well.

Samantha Darko and her friend are driving, somewhere and they wind up in this town with all these really unconvincing people. It's funny that some parts of this movie tried to be scary, but the most unnerving thing of all is the MISCASTING. Iraq Jack is supposed to be this crazy Iraq war veteran, but he looks like he just skipped class in highschool and wandered onto the set. There's this nerdy guy who tries to hit on Sam, except he looks way too pretty to be a nerd. Everyone in this movie is PRETTY. And all the guys have long hair and look really phony. Even the costumes look like they were picked up at Goodwill. Daveign Chase herself wears nothing but her underwear for pretty much the entire movie. Not that I'm complaining though.

Did I mention there is a TON of secondary characters, all of whom do nothing but tell Sam she has a destiny and that God is watching and blah blah blah. It's supposed to sound deep and meaningful, and some of it is well written but it never amounts to anything. All of the actors are pretty terrible, but Daveigh Chase herself is really bad. She looks good in front of the camera, but mumbles her way through her lines at several points. Ed Westwick should get an award for never moving his face during this entire movie. I'm serious, I don't think he blinked. Elizabeth Berkely shows up as a devout Christian housewife, with some completely idiotic dialog. She also looks totally haggard every time she's on screen.

The mystique of Donnie Darko has been totally lost here. The story of the original was supposed to be left open to interpretation at the end, and this is a really bad interpretation of that story. Somehow since Sam dies in one flow of time during this movie, she can become a manipulated dead... while she's SLEEPING? She goes around as this pale ghost self and changes some things. She makes someone burn down a church for no real reason other than to mirror the first film. And apparently she 'doesn't dream' according to the words that open the movie. She can create unicorns running in the clouds with her mind though. And somehow characters in this movie can simply go back in time at will, and something about a glowing blue feather. Doesn't this totally go against what happened in the first movie? Donnie Darko didn't have 'powers'. They tried to explain everything that was ambiguous in DD, and by doing so they confound all continuity with the original while leaving nothing to the imagination, simplifying the themes and creating nothing original of their own.

The plot of this movie is basically just ripped from the first movie. Iraq Jack has to get crushed by the meteor in order to close the time loop, pretty much the same as Donnie. This is about the only thing that really makes sense. Both the female leads wind up dead at points in the movie, but there's no emotional weight to this at all because we KNOW they will come back to life. The nerdy guy appears to have a flesh-eating disease that is never explained. Then his face turns all black and weird like a demon. Did I mention Iraq Jack is Roberta Sparrow's grandson? What's the point of this and why does he create a Frank mask? Who locked the two kids in the cave?

All in all, a very sloppy film with almost no redeeming values. A lot of it probably looked good on paper, and there are some promising scenes, but the execution is just lazy. Daveigh Chase in her underwear almost makes it worth watching. Almost.

What? Oh S Darko? I thought you said Donnie Darko. Oh...well that changes things. Um... Let me take all of that back then.

OK on a serious note there are a lot of posts on here that will say that they A.) Were huge fans of Donnie Darko B.) Thought the girls were hot and scantily clad C.) Thought the effects were not so special d.) Thought this was kind of rehashed

I agree with all of these statements. I also tried looking at it like it wasn't involved with the first movie at all and you end up with a no so brilliant, watered down less than mediocre movie. The problem is this is a Donnie Darko movie. You have fans who have watched the original over and over, read countless summaries of not only the movie but the "mechanics" of how that universe worked and then came to your own conclusions. You have fans that (myself included) donned (no pun intended) the skeleton costume and grey hoodie for Halloween. When you try to add to a cult phenomenon like Donnie Darko, unless you do your homework, you are going to fall flat.

To me this movie felt like someone watched Donnie a few times, wrote down some key elements from the movie in a notebook and then tried to incorporate it into a new movie.

As a huge fan of the original I can't find myself "hating it" in the same way that I can't hate the Star Wars prequels, so I gave it a 3 out of 10. I don't want to betray it even though it betrays the original and its fans. It was by no means one of the worst movies I have ever seen, but it is a let down of a sequel. I also gave it a 3 because I understand what this movie was trying to do (involving others in the timeline plot to change destinies) but I don't think it was done well. You still have some of the mechanics involved in the first, although altered. Even the characters are somewhat the same (the sexual deviant priest vs the sexual deviant motivational speaker, etc)

Even some of the lines used are to try to get a reaction from original fans. It just comes off as a bad rip off.

When you were done watching the original, you felt as though you wanted to watch it again and learn more. You felt a sense of witnessing something special.

As soon as I had heard about this hybrid sequel (and it is a sequel),I immediately thought that they had gone and done it again, I thought they just couldn't help themselves, I thought that it was just another money spinner and it was produced to simply draw in the gradual pulse of Donnie Darko fans.

After watching it though, it really didn't disappoint, my initial gut instinct was right. This film follows in the footsteps of other previous solo films that they just couldn't leave alone.

This film has so many Donnie Darko cliché's, it's unbelievable, the visual effects (which I could have done myself),the stylised music of the time, the time lapse scenes (which are OVERUSED),the times caped school scene (with Tears for Fears)... Everything... Everything that made Donnie Darko the artistic and visually spectacular film it was, has been transposed to this and it has been transposed, woefully.

They have even cast a couple of Jake Gyllenhaal lookalikes for some of the parts, and there is NO way this is an accident, because they act so badly, they must have been cast on their uncannily resemblance to J.G.

It's a bit like when Dennis Leary, Ripped off Bill Hicks, it's rather sad seeing someone else trying to imitate someone else's joke, you still laugh at it for a minute, but afterwards, you just want your money back.

This film is a bit poo, I can't even comment on its "plot", because, you can see "the plot", has been moulded around the model of Donnie Darko, you can see that the plot was the last thing they thought about, which funnily enough, in a Donnie Darko fashion, was probably the first thing though about in Donnie Darko.

I don't know though, for some strange reason, this feels more like a bad re-make, than a sequel, and people probably will say something like "You have watch this movie, independently, don't think that it's a sequel to Donnie Darko, try to see it for what it is.", okay, that would be a fair thing to say. But as soon as you release a movie, with one of the same actors from the original, with the same title as the original (nearly),with the same freaking emblem as the original, pfft... well... You can't cook a cookie from a recipe and say it's your own.

Now, let's get to the acting. The acting is awful, there really doesn't seem to be any interACTION, between the actors, it just feels as though they are saying the lines to each other, it really does, there doesn't feel like there is any co-character development, there doesn't seem to be any rapport at all, and more importantly, there doesn't seem to a distinguishable emotion, throughout the movie, honestly, watch it... The best actor throughout, is one of the actors who hardly has a scene John Hawkes, from, From Dusk Till Dawn and Identity.

There are also 2 shady looking characters in the film, who don Men in Black attire. They look like two bloody elephants in a fridge, they really do, they look SO out of place and so uneasy on the camera, that they were probably just picked from the town that they filmed in, either that or they are two tecchies from the production team.

As I've said before, the production looks shoddy, it really does, the effects from Donnie Darko, looked much better and that was.. what? 8 years ago? And 8 years, is a long time in technological terms. Even in one scene (this is supposed to be set in 1995),you can see post 95 produced Cars in the background, and an up to date Budweiser sign.

(I wish I could do the time travel thing and go back in time and NOT watch this film.)

All-in-All, this film is bad, I suppose my advice could be to watch it with an open mind, but I would be misadvising you, this film is obviously aimed at making a few quid from Donnie Darko fans and with that in mind, I just can't get past the audacity of the reason for this film. It is a much asked question of films, especially sequels, but I am going to ask it anyway.

Why?

I have given this film a 4/10, and that is primarily because I think that the lead is hot, she walks around a hot state, with practically nothing on most of the time and the fact that she looks like Jessica Biel, that is how skin deep I feel, after watching this film, which is no doubt, how the producers thought throughout the process of making this film.

If you are thinking of buying this on DVD for a present for someone you know who is a Donnie Darko fan, then don't, A. It will disappoint them and B. It will only spur on, more crap like this.

And as for one KILLER line in the movie...

"Like... Drugs and Anus Sex!" Best line in the whole movie.