E-Mail This Article to a Friend DONNIE DARKO: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT
	Related stories Rebel & rabbit: Richard Kelley's Donnie Darko. By Gerald Peary.

Richard Kelly’s experimental film wowed critics and sparked a cult following (the American Repertory Theatre even made it into a play) back in 2001, though it disappeared from theaters in a blip. The 20 additional minutes of this "Director’s Cut" don’t alter the eerie content of the original, but they do flesh out the mood. At first glace, Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) is an amiable high-schooler living in a pampered suburban community with attentive parents (Mary McDonnell and Holmes Osborne). But Donnie’s a troubled teen, sleepwalking each night at the call of a fiendish, six-foot-tall rabbit named Frank. He’s popping meds for his condition and seeing a shrink, and then there’s that house he burnt down. On one such somnambulant sojourn, a jet engine falls into Donnie’s bedroom, and then weird things begin to happen, including time travel, Drew Barrymore as a radical post-feminist literary instructor, and perhaps the creepiest element of the film, Patrick Swayze as a self-help guru. Kelly’s vision might not always be lucid, and the mélange may sound over the top, but it’s a hypnotic brainteaser throughout. (133 minutes)