Donnie Darko

So my first film I watched for research purposes, was 2001's 'Donnie Darko' featuring a very young Jake Gyllenhaal, and my oh my was that film strange.Give it, it wasn't heavily sci-fi, but it did look at time travel and there was one main, highly odd, costume that run throughout the film.

Donnie is a very troubled teen, and he seems to find some crazy solace with his friend Frank, who appears from time to time in the film. Frank is a large bunny which only Donnie can see...see what I mean, a little odd. Donnie is a schizophrenic with a history of violence, and only recently has he stopped taking his medication and it's with this, that Frank appears in Donnie's life. Frank comes with news that the world is going to end soon and Donnie with this information, seems to begin to take a little control of his life, and the events that happen in his life, well not sane Donnie. When Frank visits Donnie he influences him to do certain things like flood his school, burn down buildings etc and it's all these events that seem to change and shape Donnie's future.

The film is quite a deep film, and with time travel as a key theme it can be confusing at times but I still quite enjoyed it, I would definitely recommend the film. It seems to be a classic, in fact, Donnie Darko is in the top 5 of Australia's My Favourite Film poll.

In terms of costume, as I've mentioned one key costume that ran throughout the film was Frank's bunny character, when you hear the word bunny, I think cute, soft small animal, not a grey, ghostly looking bunny with an evil face and grin. When I first saw Frank, my initial feeling was to laugh, maybe it was a nervous laughter because Frank is no cute bunny. Although the costume looks quite easy to create and seems like a simple idea, it's always those simple things that can really work. I went to see 'Insidious' at the cinema last week and although I did like the film, the constant shock, screaming and jumping did get a little tedious, I felt that the film would have been that little more creative by keeping those silences in the film, and playing with the viewers' mind. This is something I think Frank's character does, because it's such a simple costume but still eerily scary, it really works.