Donnie Darko is among the most overrated films ever made. Not generally, of course, by the consumers of multiplex fare, not by the most estimable film critics- from whom it drew at best a tepid response- but a small cultish group of bourgeois fans that seemed to appropriate the film as a flag for their shallowness and pretension. So enamoured were they by its pedestrian allusions to surrealism and its cynically contrived self-aware dialogue that it became a stick with which to beat their- in truth- similarly servile peers. This adolescent cannabis saturated fandom gained the film DVD sales sufficiently substantial that writer/director Richard Kelly became something of a prospect in Hollywood. Nearly ten years later, this supposed promise was- for the few that had bothered to pay attention- plainly not fulfilled as Kelly released two films (Southland Tales and The Box) roundly derided as awful, that failed horribly at the box office- The Box barely breaking even and Southland Tales making an embarrassing loss. In spite of this ignominy, some brave- almost suicidally so- soul has allowed Kelly to try yet again, that man is the one and only high priest of gratuitous vapid cinema,
Eli Roth. Roth- a long-time friend of Kelly- will produce with the director and Sean McKittrick for Darko Entertainment a film called
Corpus Christi, which will once again recklessly allow Kelly an opportunity to display his infamous writing skills. As of yet, sales distribution and casting have yet to be formalised- though no doubt there will be some desperate marketing executive keen to take a punt- but further announcements are expected in March. The film is said to concern the story of a mentally disturbed Iraq veteran and his destructive relationship with his boss in his new civilian occupation, and us such will be the first of Kellys films to feature a deliberately prosaic setting and narrative. Production is supposedly
set to begin in July, and if recent history is anything to go by, will be available on DVD soon after.