Chris Fisher
S.Darko

«Donnie had a sister».

I already had two response options ready, depending on my mood: «Say hi to her» and «Who gives a sh*t». In hindsight, both are extremely valid.

Personally, I have nothing against the beautiful Daveigh Chase/Samantha Darko, who in the first film played an innocent girl dreaming of becoming a ballerina. What smelled like a scam (set on fire) from the very first airing of the trailer was the fact that a sequel was being made seven years after the previous one, directed by a different director no less. Yet another proof of how producers can denature their "art" as soon as they sniff box office success (isn't that their job, after all?). 

It's not to say that it can't sometimes result in a product that is still decent, albeit inferior to the previous one, but I believe that certain stories on screen should end when the credits roll, without allowing someone the luxury of devising convoluted sequels at the drawing board just to play with the audience's morbid curiosity. Apparently, I am not alone in this belief as Richard Kelly, the director of "Donnie Darko", categorically refused the idea of directing a sequel because the story he created would have been overly forced.

However, I eventually decided to free myself from prejudice and give in to the morbid curiosity of someone who loved a film and now desperately wants to see where the sequel will lead. And once the curtain finally falls (hopefully for good) on the hallucinatory affairs of the Darko family, amidst the general astonishment of those present in the theater, I think, to invert a phrase from Donnie, that there was indeed very little to be eagerly contemplated.

If in "Donnie Darko", despite the complexity of its plot, which was at times brilliant, and the various interpretive nuances, in the end, all the loose ends come together, with "S. Darko" one essentially witnesses something needlessly convoluted. Too many co-protagonists whose stories further complicate the plot. And, director Chris Fisher, emboldened by the explanations about wormholes and tangent universes in "Donnie Darko", finds the way paved and seems almost to challenge Richard Kelly, playing with space-time boundaries like a child plays with the rewind and forward buttons on the VCR, and staging resurrections, identity swaps, and apocalyptic visions that have little to do with the cult predecessor. There's no shortage of various references and parallels to Kelly's film, halfway between the most obvious cliché and the clumsy attempt to recover some aspects of the original story: from the broken-down car near a motel (a classic) to the village idiot (vaguely reminiscent of that in "Cinema Paradiso"), to the figures of the ambiguous preacher with his spinster, and the nerdy and self-conscious student (the only character remotely resembling Donnie). Not forgetting the contrived reappearance of the "rabbit", and the already-seen cinema scene. To top it all off (if it were a dish, its cholesterol would now be through the roof), the mysterious disappearance of some children. And last but not least, Daveigh Chase, 17 in the film, rather than a female Donnie, resembles Samara from "The Ring", which she also played.

Aside from the soundtrack (Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Ed Harcourt, Catherine Wheel), the film is convoluted, unresolved, forgettable. A blatant climb on mirrors.

And to be picky, «Donnie had two sisters!».