8. Frank (Donnie Darko)
On the subject of bunnies, was Richard Kelly's 2001 debut a modern, more malevolent update of
Harvey? Its premise, a young man is visited by a giant rabbit that only he can see, certainly seems to suggest so- albeit with added time-travel, Graham Greene and errant airplane engines. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the titular troubled teen, who, suffering from an unspecified mental disorder, sleepwalks outside his house in the dead of night upon obeying the call of an unknown voice. That voice, it turns out, belongs to Frank (James Duval)- no less a bunny than a man in a bunny suit (the difference is crucial, as we later see) who warns Donnie that the world will end in ''28 days, 4 hours, 6 minutes and 12 seconds''. Yet despite the heads-up, Frank is no Harvey. He compels Donnie to carry out such criminal damage as cut his school's water pipes, bury an axe into a statue of its bulldog mascot and graffiti, almost Bart Simpson-like, 'They made me do it' across the playground. Frank's omnipresence doesn't seem to much concern Donnie at first, but, rather like Alice, curiosity leads him irretrievably down the rabbit hole. Or rather, worm-hole. For a scene in which Donnie and Frank appear at opposite sides of a mirror, their hands somehow passing through and rippling the glass, throws the film from John Hughes teen drama to metaphysical science fiction. It all turns into a disorientating and divisive head-scratcher at this point, and although the significance of a rabbit as prophet isn't quite fully explained, at least there a couple of good in-jokes to keep us ticking over; the class study of 'Watership Down' and Echo and the Bunnymen on the soundtrack.