Hot on the heels of the demonic rabbits haunting both Sexy Beast and Mulholland Drive, comes Donnie Darko. This time, the kid (Jake Gyllenhaal, in an American Beautyesque role) plays a troubled teen who has bizarre visions of the future. Will his family’s house be hit by a crashing jetliner? Is everyone in his school out to get him?

This is one of those Sundance mysteries. The film screened there two winters ago to considerable buzz and a lot of talk about the Next Big Thing. Now it’s being released on video, virtually fanfare-less. Worse still, it’s been packaged as an Urban Legends or Final Destination kind of movie (really, it’s nothing like those). I can’t say I thought Donnie Darko was brilliant, but it has chutzpah, and deserves extra marks for just being so damned weird. It’s cryptic, and I’m not sure what, precisely, the filmmakers (Drew Barrymore coproduced) were trying to do, but at least it’s not another vehicle pressed from the cookie cutter.
Which, come to think of it, segueways perfectly into Don’t Say a Word, another standard film for a fading film star (in this case, Michael Douglas). Funny, but I found the movie’s predictable conformity almost comforting on video, though undoubtedly it would have felt like more of a ripoff if I’d shelled out to see it on the big screen. :


—Matthew Hays