User reviews

What? Oh S Darko? I thought you said Donnie Darko. Oh...well that changes things. Um... Let me take all of that back then.

OK on a serious note there are a lot of posts on here that will say that they A.) Were huge fans of Donnie Darko B.) Thought the girls were hot and scantily clad C.) Thought the effects were not so special d.) Thought this was kind of rehashed

I agree with all of these statements. I also tried looking at it like it wasn't involved with the first movie at all and you end up with a no so brilliant, watered down less than mediocre movie. The problem is this is a Donnie Darko movie. You have fans who have watched the original over and over, read countless summaries of not only the movie but the "mechanics" of how that universe worked and then came to your own conclusions. You have fans that (myself included) donned (no pun intended) the skeleton costume and grey hoodie for Halloween. When you try to add to a cult phenomenon like Donnie Darko, unless you do your homework, you are going to fall flat.

To me this movie felt like someone watched Donnie a few times, wrote down some key elements from the movie in a notebook and then tried to incorporate it into a new movie.

As a huge fan of the original I can't find myself "hating it" in the same way that I can't hate the Star Wars prequels, so I gave it a 3 out of 10. I don't want to betray it even though it betrays the original and its fans. It was by no means one of the worst movies I have ever seen, but it is a let down of a sequel. I also gave it a 3 because I understand what this movie was trying to do (involving others in the timeline plot to change destinies) but I don't think it was done well. You still have some of the mechanics involved in the first, although altered. Even the characters are somewhat the same (the sexual deviant priest vs the sexual deviant motivational speaker, etc)

Even some of the lines used are to try to get a reaction from original fans. It just comes off as a bad rip off.

When you were done watching the original, you felt as though you wanted to watch it again and learn more. You felt a sense of witnessing something special.

As soon as I had heard about this hybrid sequel (and it is a sequel), I immediately thought that they had gone and done it again, I thought they just couldn't help themselves, I thought that it was just another money spinner and it was produced to simply draw in the gradual pulse of Donnie Darko fans.

After watching it though, it really didn't disappoint, my initial gut instinct was right. This film follows in the footsteps of other previous solo films that they just couldn't leave alone.

This film has so many Donnie Darko cliché's, it's unbelievable, the visual effects (which I could have done myself), the stylised music of the time, the time lapse scenes (which are OVERUSED), the times caped school scene (with Tears for Fears)... Everything... Everything that made Donnie Darko the artistic and visually spectacular film it was, has been transposed to this and it has been transposed, woefully.

They have even cast a couple of Jake Gyllenhaal lookalikes for some of the parts, and there is NO way this is an accident, because they act so badly, they must have been cast on their uncannily resemblance to J.G.

It's a bit like when Dennis Leary, Ripped off Bill Hicks, it's rather sad seeing someone else trying to imitate someone else's joke, you still laugh at it for a minute, but afterwards, you just want your money back.

This film is a bit poo, I can't even comment on its "plot", because, you can see "the plot", has been moulded around the model of Donnie Darko, you can see that the plot was the last thing they thought about, which funnily enough, in a Donnie Darko fashion, was probably the first thing though about in Donnie Darko.

I don't know though, for some strange reason, this feels more like a bad re-make, than a sequel, and people probably will say something like "You have watch this movie, independently, don't think that it's a sequel to Donnie Darko, try to see it for what it is.", okay, that would be a fair thing to say. But as soon as you release a movie, with one of the same actors from the original, with the same title as the original (nearly), with the same freaking emblem as the original, pfft... well... You can't cook a cookie from a recipe and say it's your own.

Now, let's get to the acting. The acting is awful, there really doesn't seem to be any interACTION, between the actors, it just feels as though they are saying the lines to each other, it really does, there doesn't feel like there is any co-character development, there doesn't seem to be any rapport at all, and more importantly, there doesn't seem to a distinguishable emotion, throughout the movie, honestly, watch it... The best actor throughout, is one of the actors who hardly has a scene John Hawkes, from, From Dusk Till Dawn and Identity.

There are also 2 shady looking characters in the film, who don Men in Black attire. They look like two bloody elephants in a fridge, they really do, they look SO out of place and so uneasy on the camera, that they were probably just picked from the town that they filmed in, either that or they are two tecchies from the production team.

As I've said before, the production looks shoddy, it really does, the effects from Donnie Darko, looked much better and that was.. what? 8 years ago? And 8 years, is a long time in technological terms. Even in one scene (this is supposed to be set in 1995), you can see post 95 produced Cars in the background, and an up to date Budweiser sign.

(I wish I could do the time travel thing and go back in time and NOT watch this film.)

All-in-All, this film is bad, I suppose my advice could be to watch it with an open mind, but I would be misadvising you, this film is obviously aimed at making a few quid from Donnie Darko fans and with that in mind, I just can't get past the audacity of the reason for this film. It is a much asked question of films, especially sequels, but I am going to ask it anyway.

Why?

I have given this film a 4/10, and that is primarily because I think that the lead is hot, she walks around a hot state, with practically nothing on most of the time and the fact that she looks like Jessica Biel, that is how skin deep I feel, after watching this film, which is no doubt, how the producers thought throughout the process of making this film.

If you are thinking of buying this on DVD for a present for someone you know who is a Donnie Darko fan, then don't, A. It will disappoint them and B. It will only spur on, more crap like this.

And as for one KILLER line in the movie...

"Like... Drugs and Anus Sex!" Best line in the whole movie.

S. Darko is one of many sequels that has no reason to have been created at all. But even if one puts the original film out-of-mind, and only look at the sequel on it's own merits, the movie still falls completely flat.

The film picks up 7 years after the original left off, Samantha Darko and her friend Corey are on a cross-country trip heading for Los Angeles. When car problems leave them stuck in a little town by the name of Conejo Springs (which is populated by a community of horribly written character's), the girls are forced to mingle with the townies, and Corey finds herself at home with the boozy losers, while Samantha, still in pain over the death of her brother (Donnie), finds herself drawn to the Outsider by the name of Iraq Jack, a disturbed Gulf War vet who has learned through bizarre visions that the world is coming to an end on July 4th, 1995.

It seems that Nathan Atkins is a fan of Richard Kelly's work (including Southland Tales because the character of Iraq Jack seems similar to the character 'Pilot Abilene' & the end of the world date being on 'July 4th') But Atkins can't write believable dialogue to save his life. And the director 'Chris Fisher' doesn't seem to understand what made the original film so good, which was the feeling of being able to connect with the characters going through something this crazy. And if the audience doesn't care about the characters on-screen it becomes very hard for them to feel any effect of the narrative structure.

S. Darko is a hollow cash-grab by producers who must have never understood what Kelly was going for, but they now control the rights to the Darko universe, and they're hoping to collect any profit from this wannabe Donnie Darko replica.

As huge fan of the first Donnie Darko I was very excited to see this. It was such a shame that the original director didn't make this film. The film is trashy and brings nothing new to the table. It take a handful of special effects and concepts from the first one and turns it into a crappy teen flick. The main characters made me cringe and after the first half an hour I thought this is a disgrace to the original film.

This film is not worth wasting your time on. The sad thing is that some people will see this film without seeing the original Donnie Darko. This film should never have been made.

I was honestly shocked that this film was actually worse than I was expecting it to be. It really seems like the writer and director got hired for the job, watched about half of the first film before they got bored, and then set off to make something roughly similar. Awful dialogue, careless (and painfully obvious) anachronisms, and some jaw-droppingly bad CG effects. I'd be willing to bet they had more money to make this than Richard Kelly had to work with on the original, and none of it's up on the screen. Maybe it cost them a lot of money to license "Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe" by Whale.

*cough* Anyway, as far as cash-grab sequels go this has to be one of the all-time worst. A suggestion: tape an episode of "One Tree Hill" or "Gossip Girl," then put on some red-and-blue 3D glasses, and pretend one of the cast members is saying stuff like "Remember the future" and "My farts taste like cherries." Then watch the show on rewind for about twenty minutes and do it all over again. Repeat for 102 minutes total, and you've had roughly the same experience. Utterly shameful.

Before anyone gets on their high horse saying I am one of those Donnie Darko fans not giving this new movie a chance, I gave this film a chance and spent the five bucks to rent it straight away after learning it existed.

The only good thing about this film is that it ended. OK, that may be harsh, the film's colour and surrounding landscape it unfolds in is pretty cool but that is it. The only other interesting elements, whether technical in filming style or plot-wise of this film, were ripped straight from the first film. What was cool in Donnie Darko is merely imitation here.

The plot is weak and has logic holes which fail the Donnie Darko/tangent universe test from the first film. As fans of the original we cannot help but compare the two films because s.Darko centres on characters and memories from the first one and rotates on the principles that drove the original as well. How can you not compare the two? What almost borders on insulting in this film are the straight repetitions of acts, scenes and quirky characters from the first one replicated in this one. I don't want to spoil the film if you are drawn to sit and endure it but you'll see what I mean, you cannot miss the weak, formulaic repetition, especially if you are a fan of the original.

Basically, s.Darko is the same model car like Donnie Darko but has different paint colour and chokes along on a four-cylinder engine whereas the first one rumbled along on six.

If you thought "How can they make a sequel to Donnie Darko?" then you should be warned. This movie fails as miserably as you would expect. It also lacks in the quality of the cinematography of the original. It is almost unwatchable.

The ending to the original Donnie Darko was absolutely superior. It absolutely completed the story and left the viewer to ponder the meaning and philosophical implications of the work quietly to themselves. There was no antagonist to be reviled from the dead to fight again and no antagonist, having saved the world once to be brought out of a failed marriage and rehab somewhere to save the world again. I do not mind watching movie series even movies such as Saw or Rocky. But Donnie Darko is not the type of movie that could possibly lend itself well to a series and it doe not deserve to be put in a category with those types of movies and the attempt to do so is a complete failure.

well where do i begin. i never expected much from this film but i hoped for so much more than i got. the plot is randomly all over the place with hints of donnie darko crow bared in to make it relevant to the original(and probably the idea was to interest fans of the original). the acting is very wooden, the story is totally rambling and the end is stupid in so many ways. it seems very much like the makers have gone way out of the way to appeal to fans of the original, well i am very much one of those fans and i hated it with more than a passion, i only found out about this movie about an hour before i sat down to watch it, i wish i never found out about it.its obvious why it went straight to DVD. so if you are a fan of the original stay away from this one and just keep on loving donnie darko.

Well, i reed a lot of comments about how bad this movie is. Normally i trust the comments on IMDb, but this time i decided to watch the movie.

And hey, it was not that bad. If they did not had named it s.darko i would say it is a greate movie.

It really has not anything to do with Donny Darko. But except of this it is very entertaining. Cute chicas which looks like 17 are stumbling through a kind of screw back time horror movie.

The story does not make any sense and there are way to much Beverly hills 90210 look a like people in it. (including the nerd who looks totally cool after he took off his glasses and changed his shirt)

But it totally entertained me. There are greate pictures of wide desert landscapes in it. The girls are pretty and the story is mystical without looking like a cheap scifi channel story.

If you are bored and open for 90 minutes of easy entertainment, then it will not be a waste of time. (except you wait for darko greatness. this will not happen)

Oh my gosh. Why? I just don't get it. This has got to be one of the worst sequels ever made. Lets look at the list and take a look at everything wrong with this film. And by the way let me say i AM a big fan of Donnie Darko.

1. The acting is almost unbearable. 2. The story sucks... well if you even want to call it a story. 3. its so confusing and does not even come together in the end. 4. The characters are extremely unlikable if you liked these characters my heart goes out to you... but you have no brain. 5. SO MUCH LAME CGI There you go the top five list of why this movie is so awful. I give this film a F.

This movie is trash if you've seen the first Donnie Darko movie. It has nothing to do with the original. And the actors are really making the movie boring. I saw 1 hour of the movie then I got really angry, and turned it off.

I wanted to give it a chance..

The movie has an feeling of those teenage movies that gets released pretty often. I can't understand the director what he thought when he made the second part like this.

It might be a trend that all second part followers movies gotta be this way. Why waste money on something thats not come from the heart.

R.I.P Donnie Darko.

I'm in agreement with virtually all of the negative reviews so far. This film is completely derivative and almost completely unoriginal. In fairness, though, there may be some things that make S Darko a little less incoherent. The basic universe of S Darko could be the tangent universe of Donnie Darko. The universe problem in the first film is not that the tangent universe cannot and must not exist, but that any universe cannot be contaminated by a tangent universe. My interpretation may be completely wrong, but the tangent universe plane engine in Donnie represents the contamination that must be corrected. Otherwise, why did Frank wake Donnie? If the ongoing reality in S Darko is that Donnie was killed by a still unidentified engine, then S Darko is an exploration of that tangent universe that Donnie saved us from. In DD, it has to be that the engine that killed Donnie is from the real universe, and from the plane that WOULD HAVE been carrying Sam and her mother had they gone to the competition. Donnie accepted death because that is how our universe should have unfolded. Maybe the rest of Sparkle Motion died, or maybe none of them went. Unfortunately, this probably suggests that in the tangent universe, Sam and her mother are both dead.

That said, the S Darko filmmakers were too intent on maintaining the rules and structure of DD in this film, and rather than an homage they made a very unconvincing re-make. They painted themselves into a corner. Exploring Donnie's tangent universe would be OK to do, but it should have opened up new levels of reality rather than to cram us into the old ones.

I am an oddball in that I have NOT seen "Donnie Darko" yet I watched "S. Darko". This is because I have an odd obsession--to see as many of the films from the Bottom 100 list on IMDB as I can. I also decided NOT to see the original film because from what I read, folks who loved the original (and it seems to have a cult-like following) absolutely hated this sequel...and I wanted to see if the sequel might be better if you never saw the first. So is this film bad enough to be #88 on the list? No...while it IS a terrible film in many ways, there are definitely many worse films that this one...not exactly a glowing endorsement.

The biggest problem about the film are the two female leads. Both play characters who are annoying jerks....and any film with annoying jerks in the lead faces an uphill battle. In addition, the acting of many (including one of the male leads) is terrible. They or the director seem to think that talking monotone and emoting very little is the epitome of cool. Instead, I just found the acting (like the characters) to be super-annoying.

As far as the plot goes, there are a lot of weird dream-like warnings about some pending apocalypse in a rural town in the American West (it was filmed in Utah). The special effects were very interesting...but the story was confusing and silly.

Overall, a film that I didn't like at all but TECHNICALLY it isn't completely terrible.

I saw Donnie Darko not long before the release of S. Darko. I've watched Donnie Darko countless times so i originally viewed it and was interested in the sequel. I felt this movie would fall to the usual sequel stereotype of being ridiculous, cheesy and trying to ride on the fame of the original and i was right.

S. Darko takes place seven years after the event of Donnie Darko. The film starts with Samantha Darko (Donnie's sister who was ten in Donnie Darko) and her friend Corey on a road trip to Los Angeles but their car breaks down just outside of a small town called Conejo Springs, Randy, the local dark and moody kid, gives the pair a ride to the mechanic. Corey becomes immersed in the town's party scene with Randy.

From there the movie just tries to recreate the mood of Donnie Darko and dramatically fails. They even parallel some the memorable lines from the first one "Why are you looking at me funny?" "Why do you look so funny?" It is clear director Chris Fisher saw the original film well enough to make a copy but didn't follow the depth or meaning behind any of the original movie.

The acting was definitely sub par, it seems the casting crew went for beauty instead of talent which is not what Donnie Darko was ever about. Surprisingly the special effects were pretty standard, nothing to ridiculous but nothing to write home about either. This movie followed the typical teen movie guideline, hot chicks, crazy stuff and action.

S. Darko will fall short of Donnie Darko fans expectations. Even a person who knows nothing about Donnie Darko will have trouble enjoying this movie.

S. Darko is how one sucks a f***

I'm a huge fan of the first film. That said, when I heard they were making a sequel, my first thought was simple: "Why?" However, I consider myself an open-minded person. I knew I'd watch the movie before passing judgment. My expectations were incredibly low, however. I figured that it would either be a poor attempt at cashing in on the first film's success, a cute film that made a decent attempt, or a surprise hit that blew my mind. The large amount of time since the first film made me doubt the first option, and the fact that Richard Kelly would not be involved made me doubt the third. So I figured it would be an okay film, worth watching once, and then forgetting about. The film finally came out, and I decided to rent it. I watched it with a friend, also a big Donnie Darko fan. My final verdict: I was indeed blown away. I will say that this film is not really on the same level as Donnie Darko. But it was far better than I had expected it to be. In terms of cinematography, the film is superb. In smaller terms: it LOOKS like Donnie Darko. You'll find fast-motion clouds, slow-motion parties, and upside-down, rotating shots. All of the rules of the first film are kept intact. Those who are very involved in the mythology of the film will likely not be disappointed. Everything about time travel, water, metal... all remains intact. My major qualm is that some things seemed directly lifted off of the first film. Of the now four people I know who watched both the first movie and this sequel, all four have found that to be its biggest flaw. But it does have its own story, and it's a beautiful story. The effects are wonderful, very beautiful. Overall, the movie is worth watching. I expect a lot of people will cast it aside and hate it simply because it exists. Good for them. But this movie is a good continuation, a great sequel (considering the original mastermind was nowhere to be found) and it was put together by true fans, for true fans. Where Donnie Darko blew my mind out of this world, this movie at least blew my mind out of my chair. That's more than can be said for a lot of films. In short, this movie is not Donnie Darko. It is what it is, and it is good.

I want to punch something or someone! GET ME CHRIS FISHER! ARGH If only I was aloud to swear. S. Darko is most certainly not where Donnie Darko left off. The actors who play both protagonists have never been in anything prominent or good (meant in its lowest form), so I didn't expect anything magnificent but this is something else. The film tries to be "Donnie Darko" but falls: using a similar structure, story and premise. I could have seen this movie being somewhat of a success if it had a different directer. WHY DO WE ALLOW CHRIS FISHER TO STILL MAKE FILMS HAVEN'T WE ALL COME TO REALISE THAT HE IS RUBBISH! I don't think I have truly expressed my anger for this film and I do think i ever will be able to as words can't express this hatred!