I watched Donie Darko For the first time last night, can someone please tell me what the hell happened at the end? I was sooo confused! Lol!

if you wanna know that then watch the directors cut - its all explained there.

the ending in the original was left that way so the viewers could come up with their own theories.

Call me simple but I don't like films like that, much. Not if they're pretentiousy (that's not a word) like this one was. Akira did it, but it was different.

This film bored me to death.

I watched Donie Darko For the first time last night, can someone please tell me what the hell happened at the end? I was sooo confused! Lol!

matt's quick donnie darko explanation:

Ok so the plane engine went through a wormhole to the past causing a tangent universe which would end in 28 days because it shouldn't exist. Donne was the only one who could save everyone and stop the world from ending. So Frank the rabbit made Donnie do stuff like flooding the school etc so that:

1. He would meet gretchen and hence not feel alone and no longer fear death, as at first he had no real connection with anyone in the world.

2. his mum and his sister would be on the plane that was going to crash

3. he would kill frank so that frank could tell him what to do in the past (as now frank is dead he has the power to time travel and tell donnie what to do, if frank wasn't killed then he never would have been able to go back and tell donnie all the stuff)

This was all done so that at the end of the film to save gretchen (cos she got killed) and his mum and sis from dying he'd have to travel back in time (which he seems to have the power to do, donnie is indeed a modern day superhero) so that none of it ever happened. The universe was trying to "fix" itself if you see what i mean, they just needed donnie to be the one to press the reset button.



It really isn't that confusing after watching it a couple of times. And in fact the film has a more emotional impact once you figure out what's going on, that donnie takes this leap of faith, sacrificing himself to save everyone.

Hope that helps.

I also like my own theory that the whole thing was part of Donnie's imagination..... :)

I'm with the paranoid schyzophrenic (sp?) theory. Basically it was all in his head. There were times where he was normal, and times when he wasn't. I think that the whole 28 days thing was really a dream or something of his. I could be completely off though.

Then why at the end does it pan past all the people that were involved with donnie during the 28 days and some of them remember stuff?

Also it all "just being a dream" seems a rather uninteresting way to end it.

The beauty of Donnie Darko is that you can take it how you will.

As YouOwnMeAnIOU and someone else has already said, you can take it how you want. Thats how I take it.

I loved the movie! And I can't get that song out of my head. I forget the name of the song, but it's in the "Gears of War" ad, which is on TV every hour or so.

Pakx' Donnie Darko Explination:

A Pretencious director with nothing new or original to say decided he'd overconvolute his lame plot with a bunch of surrealist pop-philosiphy that's about as deep as The Matrix Revolutions was credible. Pakx watched this movie twice, because people said you need to get it. so i did, and i got it, and it was stupid. so Pakx decided to buy Oldboy instead, and all was well.

Donnie was simply a stereotypical "disenfranchized teen" but less funny than Ferris Beuler.

his sister was just as stereotypical in her role as the "bitchy popular sister" and even looked like Ferris Beuler's sister.

Frank The Rabbit was something creepy to use as a vehicle for all sorts of 'oh so clever' quotes and phrases, then at the end you'd all go "wwwwoooooowwww this movie is sooooo deeeep maaaan."

just because you have a shmultzy montage at the end of your flick, and you refference The Evil Dead a few times, doesnt make you a good film maker, this is masturbatory junk for scene kids and people who've never watched a Hitchcock film. the film was overconvoluted not for the sake of getting a point across or because it needed to be for any real reason, it was convoluted simply to hide the fact that this film was completely and utterly commonplace. it wasnt special or different or original, it was just alot of coiled up crap ripped off from about five much better films.