I only know about Donnie Darko as a thing of legend: an offbeat B flick with much-vaunted spiritual overtones, a project that completely fell off Hollywood’s radar and yet wound up with an incredibly loyal cult following.  And as near as I can tell, the Darko cult has as many fans as the film itself, if not more.

But also near as I can tell, nobody associated with the “Donnie Darko tale” S. Darko had anything to do with the original.  In a way, I suppose, that almost makes this “sequel” a rather expensive fan film, one that might—I am also supposing—be more enjoyable for those who have actually seen Donnie Darko.  But it’s really hard to tell.

The story of S. Darko seems pretty self-contained.  Samantha is on a road trip from Virginia to California with her girlfriend Corey.  Seven years after her brother Donnie was killed by a free-falling jet engine randomly squashing him in his sleep, Sam is tired of everything and just looking for escape.  When the teens’ car breaks down just outside Conejo Springs, Utah—a town where everything is “just around the corner,” as helpful (if morose) hunk Randy says—Sam hops out of more than just a car and into more than just a road trip. It’s enough to make your head spin, or at least itch badly.

Everybody’s kind of jumpy and mysterious in Conejo Springs.  The time is just before Independence Day 1995, and Iraq Jack suffers from Gulf War PTSD, climbing windmills and forging odd headdresses in order to deal with his apocalyptic visions.  The shorts-clad police with too little to do suspect that Jack might be the one behind the abduction of a number of missing children.  Judy and Pastor John palm off WWJD bracelets and copies of Jesusology while spouting vaguely Christian platitudes—a show of religion appropriate for a small Utah town, perhaps, but oddly un-Mormon.  Nerd Jeremy waxes poetic over meteorite fragments and flirts badly with Sam.  Randy sulks a lot about his missing brother, and gets vaguely turned on by Corey’s bad attitude.

Oh, and then there’s Jack’s visions about the End of the World and a bloodied, dressed-up Sam who talks kind of like Bad Galadriel—and numerous fleeting glimpses of some glum kid in red pajamas.  Not to mention a leather-bound volume about time travel.  And ectoplasmic manifestations that stream periodically from characters’ chests like some leftover special effect from a James Cameron film.

At one level, the film tries oh so hard to be hiply funny.  Corey asks at one point, “What do you think God’s farts taste like?”  And when Judy describes her “personal” Jesus as “big, strong, tanned, lots of muscles,” and concludes, “He’s awesome!”, it’s obvious that most of the humor is going to be targeted at piety of a certain sort.  Fair enough.  Easy enough target.  And I suppose that similar digs are being taken other philosophies as well, digs that fall equally as flat.

At another level, the film is packed with allusions of all sorts.  In an anagrammatic (and reversing) theatre marquee display, Twelve Monkeys and Strange Days are an odd double feature at the local filmhouse; Sam pulls a feather from a TV in a scene reminiscent of Videodrome; Jeremy’s glasses evoke Christopher Reeves’ Clark Kent; Randy is sculpted, I think, to remind us of both Joaquin Phoenix and Johnny Depp.  When John urges Sam to “look up on the screen and visualize God’s plan”—just before reaching between her thighs—you just know that at least an oblique part of S. Darko’s purpose is a meta-tation on the ways in which we remake our futures through the religious therapy of Hollywood Entertainment.

But gosh, as narrative, as comedy, and as metaphor, the film just does not work for me.  Still, its rabbit-trailing, time-tripping, future-shifting vision does make me think about Butterfly Effect-ish philosophy a little more deeply than I have in a while.  “Who should I save, and how?” seems to be the operative question behind various characters’ quests in the film, with multiple deaths and resurrections being part of the equation.  But equally important—for the audience, if not Sam, Corey, or Jack—is the issue: “Yes… but who do you abandon to get there?”

I’m glad I watched the film for that final notion: very worthwhile, very poignant.  Still, what a slog along the way.

Will Darko fans like it better than I did?  I really don’t know.  I suspect they might.

If, however, you’re new to the Darko franchise, I somehow imagine that this is not the place to jump into it.

S. Darko is rated R for “language, some violent content and brief drug use.”  At many points, I expected the film to really head into standard horror-genre material… and yet it didn’t.  The R rating seems exceptionally strong for this film.  PG-13 seems more appropriate.

Courtesy of a national publicist, Greg screened a promotional DVD of S. Darko.