Linkshoch
Wonderful Movie
CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
SanEat
A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."
Griff Lees
Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
echanove
Donnie Darko was a superb film: disturbing, coherent and consistent because of a very good script. If you liked it, you'll have at least curiosity about this sequel, but you'll be disappointed about the result. However, the proposal, with a lower budget and and a more Tarantino or Rodriguez approach and style, keeping away of the teenager comedy genre of DD could be attractive, but it fails.In fact, at the beginning the plot appears to be a road movie like Death Proff -even Thelma and Louis is referenced by the motel owner !! in a funny wink- or movies like that, but despite some little hits of the script it doesn't work good enough as it develops. Many things of the movie are confusing and they don't mix as good as in DD.Anyway, if you like this kind of films or if you loved or were astonished (like me) about DD, you should watch the film. At least because you will laugh in many moments, and who knows, probably this is not a handicap for the film !!. So, no totally bad and unwatchable, but insufficient.
HighSociety72
As most of the other reviews mention, this really is not a spot-on sequel to Donnie Darko. This movie raises far more questions than it answers, and while that's fine, it also leaves so many issues open that you start to wonder if there was even a point at all. Let me go over a few of the points in this movie that genuinely bothered me;~The Second Tangent Universe; In this movie, there are actually 2 Tangent Universes; the main one, and about half way through, another one is thrown in. There was NO point to this whatsoever, and it didn't contribute anything to the story. If anything, it ruined the philosophy that Donnie Darko-style Time Travel is about; Tangent Universes are supposed to be extraordinarily rare. For 2 to happen at the same time is beyond any odds I'd ever believe. Not to mention that the second universe really didn't add anything; it killed off one of the two girls and resolved nothing.~The meteorite; Yeah, that's right. Meteorite. One happens to be the Artifact in the Primary Tangent Universe, and some kid gets his hands on it. He develops rashes, starts acting weird, and at the end apparently just goes insane. And my only real complaint; what in the absolute f***, does this have to do with anything? ~The tesseracts; Now, from what I understand, a tesseract is a fourth- dimensional hypercube, basically a 4D cube. And the fourth dimension, from what I understand, is time. So a bunch of cubes that exist within the fourth dimension showing up in a movie mostly about time travel, not unlikely, but still, nothing about them is ever truly explained. ~Resolution; There is none. At the end, the kid is still locked up, nobody knows where he is (Sam should know if she remembered anything about her time in the Tangent Universe), the people hiding the kid are still living happy ordinary f***ed up lives, and nothing is resolved for anybody, not even in the Tangent Universe. Nothing positive happens at really any point in this movie. And finally, ~Death for the Living Receiver(s); The Living Receiver does not have to die for the Tangent Universe to be closed. There is nowhere that says one has to at all. So I don't get why that bit of information seems left out. Nobody HAS to die at all. But both Living Receivers, knowing full well what's coming ahead, decide to die. No. The job is done the second the Tangent Universe is resolved. Death adds nothing to it.It seems this movie was made without really understanding the original movie. It seems like somebody watched it once, liked it, worked about half of it out for himself, and decided there had to be a sequel, since everything else was getting one. Its only redeeming quality was the fact that the same actress who initially played Sam Darko reprises her role in this one. I would recommend against seeing this one if you were a fan of Donnie Darko.
lost-in-limbo
The original is a cult-favourite that has really grown a fan base, and the independent straight-to-DVD small-scale follow-up "S. Darko" feels more like homage to it than a straight-forward sequel. Although it's not without its problems, but I didn't find it as terrible as it's labelled to be. Still it's disappointing. Where as I found the "Donnie Darko" to feel fresh, snappy and intriguing
"S. Darko" was glum, ponderous and overcooked. It's much darker, but in that case it lost the personality that shined through "Donnie Darko" that made it easier to connect with the characters in mundane suburbia. That's not saying "S. Darko" is all bad, as I found the performances acceptable (even though no one really stood out) and the soundtrack / music score builds up that airy, melodic emotional attachment that also favoured the original film. It's stylishly done by director Chris Fisher with dynamic camera-work, which captured the beautiful Utah locations and the fashionable use of sped-up visuals gives that feeling that time does move fast despite not feeling it. It's visually appealing (namely the unconscious sequences), but during stages the mellow tailoring can leave the pacing to meander.The story continues seven years later with Donnie's younger sister Samantha on the road, trying to leave behind her past but it comes back to haunt her as car trouble causes her and her friend Corey (a spunky Briana Evigan) to be stranded in a small, quiet desert town. There she becomes entangled with the local inhabitants, in which through certain circumstances cause a chain of events that leads to the countdown to the end of the world.The past repeats --- the apocalyptic visions are back. Writer Nathan Atkins spins up some new angles, but also conjures up numerous links between certain story arches --- adding onto or evolving what we learnt from the original but never too much to take away from its mythological and open nature. It's just as knotty, but some sub-plots being a little too convoluted or thinly explained (like the missing children angle). There's even an unpredictable POV change in the story's structure which is jarring, but fits well due to the possibilities and ideologies created from this world of wormholes and time-travel cemented in teenage angst. The communication between the manipulative dead and living receiver is starkly done, but at times quite flat --- even the creepy bunny mask makes an appearance, but it just isn't the same. Daveigh Chase is rather good in the lead as she harbours such a solemn presence for her character Samantha. Someone longing to break away from the past, but she finds it catching up. However while she might be the main protagonist, be it sleepwalking while having trouble figuring out what's real and what's not, she remains clueless ("wake up") to the disruptive flow affecting the universe, as for other characters (like her friend Corey, town lad Randy and especially Iraq Jack) paths are chosen. These people seem to control their own destiny with their choices of making things right (mainly sacrifice) going on to affect Sam, as they see hope in her. Everything must happen for a reason, in what seems like larger forces at work.This all might read interesting on paper, but the execution isn't that compelling as it could have been. Some instances are simply rehashed (repetitive dialogues and actions) and the small town dramatics caught under a magnifying glass never truly engages in its crazy, unusual situation. You seem to be waiting for things to happen, then in natural progression. The lesser characters feel quite hollow and trivial to the actual scheme of things. The neurotic special effects are clunky, but still have that novel touch about them towards their use in the surreal story-telling. The young cast feature the likes of Ed Westwick, James Lafferty, Jackson Rathbone and also appearing is Elizabeth Berkley, Mathew Davis and an enjoyable John Hawkes.Tries hard, but I guess like someone stated "Death comes to us all".
JKuenzel
...sadly enough, I did not use IMDb for this movie - I usually do b4 watching a new flick. Never again!!! This movie was actually so bad, that after just 30minutes, I got up, got my netbook and checked it on IMDb - I thought I had been given the wrong film... It confirmed my worries and I must tell you: !!!DO-NOT-WASTE-YOUR-TIME-WATCHING-THIS-MOVIE!!! There is movies that waste your time and there is movies that make you angry about the fact that they did so... This is one of the latter.There is NO STORY LINE, there is NO FUNNY/SAD/INTERESTING/SCARY/COOL/MEMORABLE MOMENTS in this movie. -ANYWHERE! The chick is kinda cute - THAT IS IT. There is NOTHING good about this film: no sceneries, no nice shots, no nice music, no nice dialog, no nice plot, no, no, no, nothing... I really did try to find something good about this flick, but like another review states: you find yourself saying: "WTF...?!?!" every one to two minutes for nearly the entire movie as nothing makes sense (and that is NOT something intended by the storyline/writer), nothing matters, nothing gets you anywhere in this movie.I think this was made just to be made, not to set any new standards or be a good movie - I think someone wanted to make a movie and did so and that is it.I have seen a bunch of really bad movies lately - including LEGION - but this is by far the worse and most mundane and uninteresting movie that has EVER found its way on to my computer. DO NOT RENT THIS - EVEN IF IT IS FREE OR ONLY ONE BUCK! Don't waste your time. Go have some quality time with ur g/f / b/f / wife / husband, walk the dog, clean the litter-box, take out the trash, cook some food, do some laundry, ready a book, talk to the neighbor, watch random TV-channels or simply sleep some - anything is better than watching this p**ce of C**P!