A sequel to Donnie Darko without Richard Kelly will not be top of anyones "to watch" list but then after Southland Tales any Richard Kelly film is not at the top of my list. Take into account that financially Donnie Darko is not a success and the likeness of a sequel seems even more distant. Yet here we have it S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale.
The storys focus is on Samantha Darko sister to the eponymous Donnie, the role reprised by the now very attractive original actress Daveigh Chase, who has run away from home with her best friend fleeing to California along the dusty black top in a beaten up old car. When the car breaks down in a small town Samantha begins to exhibit the strange behaviour of her brother, the late night sleepwalking, and appears to others as a vision of death. Then a comet falls from the sky, a local nut job guilts a bunny helmet and there's the suspicious local church leader unhealthy lean toward young girls.
In a mish mash of perturbing and paradoxial plot and imagery S. Darko is an atmospheric retread of the themes of the original and helped along by a superb score goes a long way to being a decent companion piece and extension to the universe if you care to revisit. Without Kelly the visuals and deliberate indulgent complexities are left pale in comparsion.
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