S. Darko
When I first heard about a Donnie Darko sequel, I was quite skeptical.
I decided I had to at least give it a chance.
This tale follows Donnie’s youngest sister. She has run away from home and is crossing the country with her friend on the search of freedom and the opportunity to be dancers. Yeah, her friend is kind of a whore, so that probably means strippers. They have car trouble and some kid that looks like the main vampire from Twilight shows up to help them out. The small town they stay in has all sorts of weird crap going on and your basic Donnie Darko craziness ensues.
MY biggest issue with a Darko sequel was that the first movie was so incredibly awesome, that I didn’t want them to ruin it. But, this film is billed as a continuation of the first film, not a sequel. I kind of like that. It doesn’t feel like a sequel and doesn’t really try to be. It simply follows Samantha and you see how she and others are being used like Donnie was in the first film.
The main difference between this and Darko is that in the first film, Donnie is the one who has to eventually sacrifice himself to force the appropriate time continuity. Frank is the manipulated dead who is channeling the requests of those in the future. In S. Darko, Samantha is the channeled dead and another character, Iraq Jack, is the one who is having to make the sacrifice. There is a cool connection made between Iraq Jack and the original Darko film that I won’t spoil, but keep an eye out for.
Elizabeth Berkeley plays a crazy Christian who seems willing to do anything to save the youth of the town from the sins of the world. It’s a little weird seeing her in anything except Saved by the Bell, but eventually I got used to it.
Overall, this wasn’t the greatest sci-fi movie I’ve seen. It definitely wasn’t as good as Darko, but I liked it. It stayed true to the Darko universe and had some good sequences of time travel / parallel universe wackiness. I think that this movie definitely has more creepy moments that Darko as well.
If you liked Donnie Darko, this film will not blow you away, but I think you will enjoy it.
