I think the S stands for Something-kind-of-related-but-not-really

When I was in Boston the other day, I went into the two Newbury Comic stores in the area, because I like the chain as a whole, mostly. Mostly for their selection of DVDs, as it is still the only place I've seen carry Doctor Who, but for music and comics as well. While perusing the DVDs, I came across something I wasn't expecting. A straight-to-DVD release that I was aware was in the works, but hadn't known it had actually come out. What's odd is my roommate had mentioned the movie the night before, so I found it odd that I had found it. I didn't buy it, hell no. But I did find a way of viewing it nonetheless.

S. Darko (2009) is the "sequel" to the 2001 film Donnie Darko. The first film was a huge success among the high school crowd that I was a part of, and I was admittedly a fan of it. In recent years, I've found watching it to be a chore and explaining it even moreso of one. I was the first of my friends to decipher the incredible backwards-ness of the film, so I figured the sequel of S. Darko wouldn't leave me with a headache. For shame, having such high expectations.

Richard Kelly, the writer/director of the first film, had literally nothing to do with this bastardized sequel in which Chris Fisher directs with Nathan Atkins' screenplay through Samantha Darko, Donnie's little sister and her desire to get the hell out of Virginia. She has met with some hippie chick in a car that doesn't work and they're trecking it cross-country.

It's obvious that both Nathan Atkins and Chris Fisher have seen and enjoyed Donnie Darko, but they understood it about as much as everyone else on the planet who can't figure out time travel (I am not among those people, apparently). There are so many continuity issues it hurts. Why does Samantha have the Philosophy of Time Travel book? When Donnie Darko ended, it went back to the beginning, before the teacher had given him the book. The teacher and Donnie were having a really animated discussion about time travel, due to Frank's probing in his sleep-walking state. The teacher was also very hesitant about giving Donnie that book, so it's not as if he would just hand it over to his little sister with no initiation from manipulated dead to ask someone about time travel. Nor would Donnie have drawn Frank's face on the inside of it, because he wouldn't have hallucinated about him. The new version of The Last Unicorn that Samantha wrote in the first film was a nice touch, but I'm willing to bet that was a complete accident. Not to mention that it was featured in a 20-minute segment of the film that could have been removed entirely and the only difference in the movie would have been 20-minutes shorter and would have made a tiny bit more sense.

If you completely ignore the fact that Donnie Darko's name is right below the title of the movie and associate it with him, I still can't really see any good qualities of this movie. The directing was mediocre at best, with some good stolen shots and angles from the first movie. The writing was decent, but nothing too inspiring. The acting was, again, decent, but nothing special. The soundtrack, which was one of the first film's highlights, was nothing in comparison. Michael Andrews' music for Donnie Darko was creepy and hypnotising. Ed Harcourt's work on S. Darko, which he stupidly admits he tried to base partly on Clint Mansell's Requiem for a Dream soundtrack missed the mark entirely, losing the surreal feelings and just adding stupid sounds over things--including the ever-popular suspense of strings that happens whenever someone is about to creep across something spectacularly predictable. The 1990's music a la the 1980s music from the first flops even harder where the 80s rock from Donnie Darko was such a good part of the film.

There are some elements of the film that were really added just to make people interested and confused that had no plot points, no resolution, and should have been left out entirely. There is one character who develops a rash from a meteorite for no reason. You see a tesseracte, and the guy starts freaking about it like it's all a part of his plan. Tesseractes were featured greatly in books and movie about time travel, but this has NOTHING to do with the original plot of the movie which they were obviously trying to borrow from so stringently.

Richard Kelly said straight out that he hadn't read the script, had no part of the sequel, and never would. Good on you, sir. Atkins and Fisher should be ashamed. Although, I'm not entirely sure you shouldn't be for producing a film about Tucker Max.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor