10 Movies You Have To Watch TWICE To Understand

When it comes to cult classic psychological thrillers, it’s hard to really top Donnie Darko. Equal parts brilliant, bizarre, creative and creepy, this 2001 movie from Richard Kelly is the kind of thing that just sticks in your mind for a lifetime after you’ve seen it. There’s nothing quite like Donnie Darko.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Donnie is a teenager with more than his fair share of issues. During a sleepwalking episode, he meets the infamous Frank the Bunny outside his house, who gives him a cryptic warning that the world will end in just under 29 days (he’s very specific about when, right down to the second). Donnie was ‘supposed’ to have been killed by a jet engine that inexplicably hit the house and crushed his bedroom, but he awoke outside that night.

Donnie continues to hallucinate, seeing Frank more and more and being influenced by him to pursue the concept of time travel, perhaps as a way to avert the disaster only he knows is coming. With time running short and a swirling portal forming over Donnie’s family home, a plane becomes entangled in it, an engine detaches and the events of the movie rewind. Donnie wakes up in his bedroom this time, is killed by the falling engine, and those who had become embroiled in the events of the movie discover they had been dreaming too.

In short, Donnie Darko is a wild ride, rife with interesting thoughts, ideas and symbolism. Perhaps it tried a little too hard to blend too many of these elements together and came out all kinds of muddled, but it’s one heck of an experience.