It has taken a long time for me to admit that Jake
Gyllenhaal is actually pretty hot. That weird Hitler youth haircut and neck tattoo
look in Prisoners? Hot. Yearning, closeted cowboy in Brokeback Mountain? Also
hot. Obsessed killer-stalker in Zodiac? Sensitive pharmaceutical rep in Love
and Other Drugs? Hot, hot, hot. However, note that I didn’t include Prince of Persia in this
list, because fuck that movie, it was terrible, I am so angry on behalf of my
people. You get the pattern I’m creating here, though: The dude is attractive.
But my opinion was tainted for years by Donnie
Darko, that little movie that launched Gyllenhaal’s career and cemented him in
my mind as a stonecold weirdo. Talented, sure. But also very, very weird. And also kind of hot? Oh
goddammit I’m so conflicted.
And maybe “conflicted” would be the best word to use
to describe Donnie Darko; if you’ve seen it, you won’t forget it. Feeling very
much like a made-for-the-high-school-Goth-in-you film, Donnie Darko basically
bombed when released in October 2001 (the fact that the movie involves a plane
crash, and came out a month after Sept. 11, probably had a lot do with that)
but has since gained a pretty sizable cult following. And because the movie
incorporates the Halloween holiday in a pretty important way, I wouldn’t be
surprised if it gets played at a lot of parties thrown by late 20-somethings or
early 30-somethings. Is it an uplifting film? Not necessarily. Thought-provoking and original, though, and you will have so much hipster cred when you namedrop this at your next gathering of Urban Outfitters shoppers.
How to explain Donnie Darko? I don’t even know.
Sci-fi teen romance/horror story/end-of-world thriller, I guess? As I think
about my other picks for our 30 Days of Halloween series, it feels like Donnie
Darko is certainly as original as Suspiria or TheNightmare Before Christmas. But ultimately Suspiria was a pretty cut-and-dry
horror movie, and The Nightmare Before Christmas an animated romance. Comparatively, Donnie Darko defies genre. It has elements of high-school
analysis and some social commentary and a teen love story, but it’s also darkly
twisted, with a sci-fi backbone, a horror film’s visuals, and the paranoia of a
thriller. And it benefits from a variety of actors playing against type—Drew
Barrymore, instrumental in getting the film released, as an edgy English teacher;
Patrick Swayze as a child-porn-watching inspirational speaker—while Gyllenhaal,
at the center of the film, is a magnetic force of creepiness.
But if there are two visuals to point out as most
emblematic of Donnie Darko and its relation to Halloween as a holiday, it is,
of course, Frank, the monstrous rabbit (why wouldn’t
anyone dress up like Frank? Imagine all the people you would terrify, which
is kind of the original point of Halloween, not the Party-City-skankiness that
has taken over), and Donnie’s vacant, glassy stare, which was really what made
Gyllenhaal seem so otherworldly in the role. “I guess some people are just born
with tragedy in their blood” is a pretty great line for a movie that ends in
death, destruction, and sadness, all occurring right around the day of
Halloween, and Donnie Darko manages to use the holiday in an utterly effective
way. It’s not a movie about witches or demons, but in terms of getting the
spirit of Halloween right, Donnie Darko does just fine.
