S. DARKO - 8/10 (B+)

I know I should have found this to be an abomination, but it's really not. I was very pleasantly surprised. I definitely didn't expect to like it so much. I really liked Daveigh Chase here too. My only beef is the finale. It seemed like it was going somewhere else, somewhere better, but it didn't.

Definitely recommended though.

It's out? I have to see it. No disrespect Mike but this can't be good at all. I doubt it's anywhere close to the atmosphere of the original that was brilliant.

1/10 -> Awful shit that stings the eyes

Oh my. This was awful through and through. The writers basically scavenged Donnie Darko for plot points and just used them here without any reasonable intention or explanation. Bigger is better concept that so many sequels incorporate is also at work here. And as usual that proves to be a completely wrong concept.

I won't go into how most of the things don't really connect to DD (S. Darko cannot possibly have The Philosophy of Time Travel and Donnie's drawings) because I didn't expect that this movie would actually try to be a respectful sequel, but what they're doing to the whole mythology is sooooooo wrong. The Living Receivers and the Manipulated Dead are completely misused here.

The actings sucks. Daveigh Chase is awful. The girl from Step Up 2 is even more awful. The two teen males are really bad (hopefully Westwick won't become big as he just proved here he's an awful actor), Lafferty from OTH as an Iraq vet is wrongly casted as not only does he not look like a war veteran, he can't act semi-crazy if his life depended on it. The supporting cast is hardly worth the mention.

The direction is uninspired and the director tried hard to copy certain DD scenes, but not even with a blueprint of "how-to-make-a-good-DD-scene" he didn't succeed.

I don't think people who made this even saw DD. So everyone who watched DD should not see this either. Not that anyone should see this crap.

As a huge fan of the original...will I want to eat my own guts if I see this?

As a huge fan of the original, you should probably eat your own guts anyways.

I love the original. Among my favorite movies ever. You probably won't eat your own guts. I didn't. It's just a really bad movie and an even worse sequel.


As a huge fan of your opinion, you should eat your own brain. It will probably be the best thing you'll ever taste. You won't get anything better than that. Oh, and don't worry if you're unable to post if you liked it. We really don't care.

After the first one, there's no place to go but up!

Agreed, the first is one of the most overrated films I've ever seen.

Its like somebody raped Donnie's body for tips while knocking back cheap vodka making the copy very messy and also covered in flecks of vomit.

Donnie's sister is cute though.

Would you screw her... In a well?

Screw her and then throw her into the well?

I like the first film, don't love it. So in seeing this, an abomination wouldn't really piss me off or anything.

It's not an abomination. It does something mildly clever: instead of simply having Samantha re-live Donnie's part, she's now basically playing Frank the Bunny. Also, the film is well-shot and doesn't look at all direct-to-video.

The bad? I don't think the filmmakers know what they're doing here. Donnie Darko's vague on the details, at least theatrically, but I always felt Richard Kelly seemed to get what was going on, even if I didn't completely. So by the end, when everything's in its place, it feels like a fitting conclusion. The details are sparse but I get the overall picture, y'know?

S. Darko doesn't have that feeling. It's a bunch of random events building up to a lame-duck ending. It also doesn't make much sense - if Iraq Jack keeps seeing Samantha in her head-wound dress, how can she die in the car crash? I know she's brought back, but Jack's seeing a version of her that can't exist unless someone entirely unrelated plays with time travel.

The ending? Lame. No sense of conclusion at all. I guess I can say that I like the cover art.

D+

F


Holy shit. HOLY FUCKING SHIT.


Okay, as I previously have stated, I am a huge fan of the original and I have never been keen about the idea of making a sequel to it. I mean of all movies to sequelize...this?! Really? So I should have known better when I rented it, I really should have. I had no expectations whatsoever, but even if I did it probably would have ended up below the lowest of them.

Donnie Darko is a complex, multi-layered tale that requires multiple viewings, but that is actually conclusive in its own mythology. The makers of S. Darko apparently thought that as long as you can make weird shit happen, throw in some bits and pieces of Donnie Darko's mythology (but they did get it wrong mostly) and add the word paradox, you can achieve the same. WRONG.

What happened here is that the makers just made weird shit happen for the sake of weird shit happening. They want to make us think there's a large scope to all what's happening and that it's all so complicated and everything is important. When I saw Donnie Darko for the first time I didn't catch all the references and didn't completely understand it, but I knew the answers were there. I have seen this and I know that there are no answers. However, it is not even worth asking the questions because neither did the filmmakers as it seems. This movie defines the word "mess", but it is not a glorious one, it is just bad.

Daveigh Chase actually grew up to become a cute girl. That's about the only positive thing I can say about this film. It did not rape my memory of the original because apart from the title and one character they don't really have anything to do with each other. I am glad about that too.