12 Best Sci-Fi Movies You Can Watch Online For FREE

Donnie Darko's director Richard Kelly's career might've fallen by the wayside only a few years after his 2001 cult classic came out, but the same can't be said for the film itself. A strange, surreal little venture that seems to defy conventional categorization (the Wikipedia page infamously keeps changing the genre in the header section), Donnie Darko follows the titular small-town high schooler (played with remarkable aplomb by a young Jake Gyllenhaal), as he's swept by strange, otherworldly forces beyond his control, and slowly comes to realize that he might be the key to preventing the end of the world.

At least, that's the conventional plot description. The reality is, whether you watch in its original theatrical cut or Kelly's revised Director's Cut (which adds several scenes of exposition that both fleshes out the film's central conceit but also removes a lot of the intended ambiguity), Donnie Darko is less a traditional narrative than a mood piece, of the kind that best recalls the works of David Lynch (Darko was pulling off universe-hopping, time-travel shenanigans years before Lynch introduced them to the Twin Peaks-verse in The Return).

It perfectly captures the angsty, disassociative ennui of being a teenager that seems to continue well into adulthood for some. Donnie Darko is a film of individual, seemingly self-contained moments that draws the audience into the troubled psychology of its main character and the environment he lives in.

It's a dark high school comedy, a personal look at mental illness and , an otherworldly tale of time travel and alternate universes in 1980s suburbia, all at the same time. It's a film that's incredibly frustrating yet also immensely gratifying, something that demands repeat viewings, perfect for being stuck indoors.