What Does The Ending Of Donnie Darko Really Mean?

Donnie Darko may begin with its protagonist waking from a dream, but the film from that point on certainly isn't a product of reality. Conversely, the first time the viewer sees Donnie, he's totally perplexed by what he sees around him - almost as though he's entered another reality, or a dream world, curated by the giant talking bunny rabbit that's just told him to "wake up" (note that it's also a talking rabbit that leads Alice from reality into Wonderland).

If this is the case, then, the film is not a reality with hallucinations woven through it, but one of Donnie's dreams in its entirety. That there's a significant amount of doubling in this picture supports this theory: the dream of the water-logged classroom preceding Donnie flooding the school, stabbing Frank in the eye that Donnie will later shoot, a character named 'Frank' appearing in Jim Cunningham's presentation.

Then there's the reference to Graham Greene's The Destructors and Miss Pomeroy's citing of cellar door as the most beautiful combination of words in the English language, before Donnie and Gretchen go through Roberta Sparrow's own cellar doors to find Seth and Ricky tearing up the house. Much of what happens early in the film foreshadows what will come later, as if in a dream.