50 Essential Sci-Fi Films of the 21st Century (So Far)

The film that writer-director Richard Kelly has been chasing his entire career, Donnie Darko sends us back to the 1980s, where the appropriately named Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) sleepwalks through suburbia, accidentally avoiding the instant death sentence of a jet engine crashing through his bedroom ceiling, and inadvertently setting of a chain of events that will usher in the end of the world.

For 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds, we chart Donnie’s awkward, uncomfortable, and confrontational teen life as he faces unexpected deaths, interdimensional vortices, and Frank the rabbit, a possibly imaginary friend in a messed-up rabbit costume. Of course, his parents, his school, and his counsellors tell him this is all part of growing up, a product of his paranoid schizophrenia, and that he just needs to knuckle down and get on with things. But there’s more to it than that.

The film’s labyrinthine narrative keeps any easy answers at bay, and while many took this as their cue to dismiss it upon release (with only $7.5 million taken at the box office), Donnie Darko has endured in the years since, first as a cult classic built on the back of the DVD market, and now as something of a mainstream darling. It’s moody, it’s melancholic, and it’s emo - not usually the traits of great sci-fi, and yet it packs so much genre, it demands many viewings just to get the basic plot straight, and we’re still unpacking its ideas today.