S. Darko
Encyclopedia
S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale is a 2009 direct-to-video
film directed by Chris Fisher
and stars Daveigh Chase
, Briana Evigan
, and Ed Westwick
. It is the sequel to the 2001 cult hit Donnie Darko
. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on May 12, 2009 in United States, and on July 6, 2009 in Europe
.
to California
, in an attempt to become professional dancers. Their dreams are cut short when their car breaks down in a tiny Utah
town. They are saved by the town bad boy, Randy (Westwick), who takes them to the local motel where they meet the conspiracy-loving owner. He tells them of Billy Moorcroft, a boy that went missing.
Samantha starts sleepwalking
. A future version of her meets Justin (James Lafferty
) at the windmill
and tells him that the world will end; however, Justin knows this already. The next morning Samantha wakes up on a bus stop bench, where a policeman finds her and warns her about a pervert. He offers to drive her back to the motel but the two end up stopping at the site where a meteorite crashed. Samantha tells Corey that she doesn't remember what happened the night before.
While at a cafe, a science-loving geek, Jeremy (Jackson Rathbone
), tries to talk about the meteorite with Samantha. Randy invites the two girls to a party, where he tells her of his brother who went missing and how hard it has been on his family. Future Samantha stands in the middle of a road and is nearly hit by a car; Justin sees her and is entranced. Her ghost takes him to the local nondenominational church and commands him to burn it down.
The next day they find Justin's dog tags in the ashes of the church. Samantha runs into Jeremy, who is beginning to show signs of radiation exposure. Subsequently, Justin has begun working on forging a bunny-skull mask out of metal, saying he needs to help "his princess." Samantha wanders the town and soon encounters Randy and Corey. Samantha tells Corey how she wants to get out of town but the two get into a fight. Samantha runs away, and Randy's car is unexpectedly run into by another car, pushing his car into Samantha and killing her.
Corey is full of anguish about her best friend's death. She finds a book about time travel as well as a story Samantha wrote as a child, entitled The Last Unicorn, about a princess and a boy named Justin. A boy appears, and commands Corey to come with him in order to save Samantha. She follows him to a cave where she goes through a portal that takes her back in time. Everything moves backwards to when Samantha is walking down the road. Corey and Randy drive up to Samantha again and when they stop, Corey is nicer to her. As Randy drives off, the other car still runs into him, and this time Corey is killed instead.
Samantha is devastated about Corey's death. After another sleep walking incident, she sees a dress in the window of the vintage shop Jeremy's parents own. It is the same dress she wears as Future Samantha. Jeremy sees her admiring it and begins talking more about the meteorite he bought. Samantha notices tissue damage on Jeremy's arm and when told about it, he quickly covers it up and calls it a rash.
The next morning Samantha wakes up on the hill where Justin is. He takes the book about time travel from her and explains that it was written by his grandmother. He asks her to "show him how to do it" but she doesn't understand. He tells her that he made his mask from a drawing by Donnie, Samantha's deceased brother, that she showed him. She asks how he knew her brother's name and he responds by saying she told him "when she was dead". Samantha walks away and finds the bodies of two dead boys, Randy's little brother and the boy that appeared to Corey, Billy Moorcroft.
After telling the police about what she saw, everyone assumes that Justin is responsible. He soon asks Samantha to "show him how" again. The police then take him into custody. That night, Samantha returns to her motel where she finds the dress she saw at the shop, a gift from Jeremy. He asks her to wear it to see the fireworks with him. They go to a remote location and Jeremy sees what he calls tesseract
s falling from the sky. He becomes manic and Samantha notes that his rash has gotten much worse. He tries to kiss Samantha but she resists and he eventually pushes her back roughly, killing her.
Future Samantha, now identical to regular Samantha, visits Justin in jail. Randy tries to find her as fiery tesseracts fall from the sky and eventually finds her where Jeremy left her. Justin approaches and sees his mask, putting it on. Justin then goes back in time. He climbs the windmill that was destroyed at the beginning. Justin believes that his death will prevent the series of events that will lead to the end of the world so he stays on the windmill this time and is killed by the meteorite.
It is now the morning after the meteorite landing again. Samantha and Corey visit the site and find the locals are saddened as they take away Justin's body. Samantha, never having experienced the events after the meteorite crash, decides to go back home while Corey stays with Randy.
, has stated that he has no involvement with S. Darko. He stated "To set the record straight, here's a few facts I'd like to share with you all—I haven't read this script. I have absolutely no involvement with this production, nor will I ever be involved." Chris Fisher, director of S. Darko, noted that he was an admirer of Kelly's film, and that he hoped "to create a similar world of blurred fantasy and reality."
This film was an independent production of Silver Nitrate Productions, and not by Newmarket Films
(which produced the original film)—Newmarket had gone dormant by this time. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, who had the distribution rights to the first Darko, won the right to release S. Darko domestically on home video.
Filming for S. Darko began on May 18, 2008. The crew used the high resolution digital Red One cameras. Musician Ed Harcourt
signed to provide the score for the film after he "read the script and loved it". For inspiration he listened to electronic music like Clint Mansell
's score for Requiem for a Dream
, and he hopes his score will be both "surreal and psychedelic just like the movie". S. Darko was filmed in Coalville, Utah
and Magna, Utah
.
campaign was launched consisting of three YouTube
videos.
The first video is footage from a surveillance camera, showing a dumpster falling from the sky and crushing a child.
The second video is from a conspiracy theorist expressing his beliefs that metallic objects which— with no apparent rational explanation— fall from the sky and lethally crush people are "Artifacts". "Artifacts", he explains, are from parallel universes that have accidentally made contact with our main universe. He believes that when the two universes meet again further down in time, both of them will be catastrophically destroyed, unless something is done to prevent this. Examples of such "Artifacts" are the jet engine that killed Donnie Darko, a manhole that decapitated a young girl, the aforementioned dumpster, and a meteor shower over Utah that resulted in the death of a local man. The meteor shower is actually one of the main events that happen in the feature film.
The third video is from a young girl responding to the creator of the previous video. She accuses him of being a fraud and a hack who doesn't understand what he's talking about, because he stole his theories from Roberta Sparrow's book, The Philosophy of Time Travel
, which was featured in the original movie. She then shows him another link between several of these disastrous events: the falling dumpster left a hole in the ground with a shape apparently similar to a drawing of Frank's mask retrieved from the Donnie Darko's psych file; and the same shape also appears in a hunk of twisted, wrought-iron metal pulled from the wreckage of the windmill that was destroyed by the meteor shower in Conejo Springs.
and fail[ed] spectacularly in trying to create a franchise".
The Washington Post
gave a somewhat better review, calling it average but stating that "The 'Darko' faithful are better off skipping the movie entirely and devoting their attention to the making-of featurette and the commentary track" and that they "have little faith that the moviegoers who once fell in love with Kelly's unique take on teen alienation will see S. Darko as anything more than a very minor pop cultural footnote."
None of the seven reviews indexed by Rotten Tomatoes
were favorable, resulting in a score of 0%.
started working on developing a second sequel to Donnie Darko. The article claims that Richard Kelly
may have some involvement with this. Kelly has recently denied the rumor that he, or his company Darko Entertainment, is or will ever be involved with any sequels to Donnie Darko, and that they have no control over the sequels.
S. Darko director Chris Fisher
when asked about a sequel replied:
Direct-to-video
Direct-to-video is a term used to describe a film that has been released to the public on home video formats without being released in film theaters or broadcast on television...
film directed by Chris Fisher
Chris Fisher
Chris Fisher , is an American director, writer, and producer.-Career:Fisher grew up in Newport Beach and studied philosophy and law at the University of Southern California, going on to work as a corporate lawyer in London before deciding to work in the entertainment industry...
and stars Daveigh Chase
Daveigh Chase
Daveigh Elizabeth Chase is an American actress, singer, and voice over artist best known for playing Rhonda Volmer in the HBO series Big Love, Samara Morgan in The Ring and Lilo Pelekai in Lilo & Stitch.-Early life:Chase was born Daveigh Elizabeth Chase-Schwallier in Las Vegas, Nevada, but her...
, Briana Evigan
Briana Evigan
Briana Barbara-Jane Evigan is an American actress and dancer. She is perhaps best known for her roles as Andie West in Step Up 2: The Streets and Cassidy Tappan in Sorority Row. She started dancing at the age of 9 and is still dancing as part of her career today.-Early life:Evigan was born in Los...
, and Ed Westwick
Ed Westwick
Edward Jack P. "Ed" Westwick is an English actor and musician, best known for his role as Chuck Bass in the main cast on the American television series Gossip Girl.-Early life and career:...
. It is the sequel to the 2001 cult hit Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko is a 2001 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Richard Kelly and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Noah Wyle, Jena Malone, and Mary McDonnell...
. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on May 12, 2009 in United States, and on July 6, 2009 in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
.
Plot
In 1995, Samantha Darko (Chase) follows her best friend Corey (Evigan) on a road trip from VirginiaVirginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, in an attempt to become professional dancers. Their dreams are cut short when their car breaks down in a tiny Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
town. They are saved by the town bad boy, Randy (Westwick), who takes them to the local motel where they meet the conspiracy-loving owner. He tells them of Billy Moorcroft, a boy that went missing.
Samantha starts sleepwalking
Sleepwalking
Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism, is a sleep disorder belonging to the parasomnia family. Sleepwalkers arise from the slow wave sleep stage in a state of low consciousness and perform activities that are usually performed during a state of full consciousness...
. A future version of her meets Justin (James Lafferty
James Lafferty
James Martin Lafferty is an American actor, director and producer. He currently portrays Nathan Scott on the CW television drama One Tree Hill. In addition to his role on the young adult drama, Lafferty is also known for his appearance as Justin in S...
) at the windmill
Windmill
A windmill is a machine which converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Originally windmills were developed for milling grain for food production. In the course of history the windmill was adapted to many other industrial uses. An important...
and tells him that the world will end; however, Justin knows this already. The next morning Samantha wakes up on a bus stop bench, where a policeman finds her and warns her about a pervert. He offers to drive her back to the motel but the two end up stopping at the site where a meteorite crashed. Samantha tells Corey that she doesn't remember what happened the night before.
While at a cafe, a science-loving geek, Jeremy (Jackson Rathbone
Jackson Rathbone
Monroe Jackson Rathbone, V , better known as Jackson Rathbone, is an American actor and musician. He is perhaps best known for his role as Jasper Hale in The Twilight Saga and for playing Sokka in The Last Airbender....
), tries to talk about the meteorite with Samantha. Randy invites the two girls to a party, where he tells her of his brother who went missing and how hard it has been on his family. Future Samantha stands in the middle of a road and is nearly hit by a car; Justin sees her and is entranced. Her ghost takes him to the local nondenominational church and commands him to burn it down.
The next day they find Justin's dog tags in the ashes of the church. Samantha runs into Jeremy, who is beginning to show signs of radiation exposure. Subsequently, Justin has begun working on forging a bunny-skull mask out of metal, saying he needs to help "his princess." Samantha wanders the town and soon encounters Randy and Corey. Samantha tells Corey how she wants to get out of town but the two get into a fight. Samantha runs away, and Randy's car is unexpectedly run into by another car, pushing his car into Samantha and killing her.
Corey is full of anguish about her best friend's death. She finds a book about time travel as well as a story Samantha wrote as a child, entitled The Last Unicorn, about a princess and a boy named Justin. A boy appears, and commands Corey to come with him in order to save Samantha. She follows him to a cave where she goes through a portal that takes her back in time. Everything moves backwards to when Samantha is walking down the road. Corey and Randy drive up to Samantha again and when they stop, Corey is nicer to her. As Randy drives off, the other car still runs into him, and this time Corey is killed instead.
Samantha is devastated about Corey's death. After another sleep walking incident, she sees a dress in the window of the vintage shop Jeremy's parents own. It is the same dress she wears as Future Samantha. Jeremy sees her admiring it and begins talking more about the meteorite he bought. Samantha notices tissue damage on Jeremy's arm and when told about it, he quickly covers it up and calls it a rash.
The next morning Samantha wakes up on the hill where Justin is. He takes the book about time travel from her and explains that it was written by his grandmother. He asks her to "show him how to do it" but she doesn't understand. He tells her that he made his mask from a drawing by Donnie, Samantha's deceased brother, that she showed him. She asks how he knew her brother's name and he responds by saying she told him "when she was dead". Samantha walks away and finds the bodies of two dead boys, Randy's little brother and the boy that appeared to Corey, Billy Moorcroft.
After telling the police about what she saw, everyone assumes that Justin is responsible. He soon asks Samantha to "show him how" again. The police then take him into custody. That night, Samantha returns to her motel where she finds the dress she saw at the shop, a gift from Jeremy. He asks her to wear it to see the fireworks with him. They go to a remote location and Jeremy sees what he calls tesseract
Tesseract
In geometry, the tesseract, also called an 8-cell or regular octachoron or cubic prism, is the four-dimensional analog of the cube. The tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of 6 square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of 8...
s falling from the sky. He becomes manic and Samantha notes that his rash has gotten much worse. He tries to kiss Samantha but she resists and he eventually pushes her back roughly, killing her.
Future Samantha, now identical to regular Samantha, visits Justin in jail. Randy tries to find her as fiery tesseracts fall from the sky and eventually finds her where Jeremy left her. Justin approaches and sees his mask, putting it on. Justin then goes back in time. He climbs the windmill that was destroyed at the beginning. Justin believes that his death will prevent the series of events that will lead to the end of the world so he stays on the windmill this time and is killed by the meteorite.
It is now the morning after the meteorite landing again. Samantha and Corey visit the site and find the locals are saddened as they take away Justin's body. Samantha, never having experienced the events after the meteorite crash, decides to go back home while Corey stays with Randy.
Cast
- Daveigh ChaseDaveigh ChaseDaveigh Elizabeth Chase is an American actress, singer, and voice over artist best known for playing Rhonda Volmer in the HBO series Big Love, Samara Morgan in The Ring and Lilo Pelekai in Lilo & Stitch.-Early life:Chase was born Daveigh Elizabeth Chase-Schwallier in Las Vegas, Nevada, but her...
as Samantha Darko - Briana EviganBriana EviganBriana Barbara-Jane Evigan is an American actress and dancer. She is perhaps best known for her roles as Andie West in Step Up 2: The Streets and Cassidy Tappan in Sorority Row. She started dancing at the age of 9 and is still dancing as part of her career today.-Early life:Evigan was born in Los...
as Corey Corn - Ed WestwickEd WestwickEdward Jack P. "Ed" Westwick is an English actor and musician, best known for his role as Chuck Bass in the main cast on the American television series Gossip Girl.-Early life and career:...
as Randy Jackson - James LaffertyJames LaffertyJames Martin Lafferty is an American actor, director and producer. He currently portrays Nathan Scott on the CW television drama One Tree Hill. In addition to his role on the young adult drama, Lafferty is also known for his appearance as Justin in S...
as Justin Sparrow - Jackson RathboneJackson RathboneMonroe Jackson Rathbone, V , better known as Jackson Rathbone, is an American actor and musician. He is perhaps best known for his role as Jasper Hale in The Twilight Saga and for playing Sokka in The Last Airbender....
as Jeremy Frame - Elizabeth BerkleyElizabeth BerkleyElizabeth Berkley is an American television, film, and theatre actress. Berkley's most notable roles were in the television series Saved by the Bell, as brainy feminist Jessie Spano, and the 1995 Paul Verhoeven film Showgirls, as exotic dancer Nomi Malone.-Early life:Berkley was born and raised...
as Trudy Kavanagh - Matthew DavisMatthew DavisMatthew W. Davis is an American actor.-Life and career:Davis was born in Salt Lake City. He attended Woods Cross High School, and the University of Utah....
as Pastor John Wayne
Production
Donnie Darkos writer and director, Richard KellyRichard Kelly (director)
James Richard Kelly is an American film director and writer, best known for writing and directing the cult classic Donnie Darko in 2001.-Early life:...
, has stated that he has no involvement with S. Darko. He stated "To set the record straight, here's a few facts I'd like to share with you all—I haven't read this script. I have absolutely no involvement with this production, nor will I ever be involved." Chris Fisher, director of S. Darko, noted that he was an admirer of Kelly's film, and that he hoped "to create a similar world of blurred fantasy and reality."
This film was an independent production of Silver Nitrate Productions, and not by Newmarket Films
Newmarket Films
Newmarket Films is an American film production and distribution company which is a subsidiary of Newmarket Capital Group. It was founded in 1994.-Brief summary:...
(which produced the original film)—Newmarket had gone dormant by this time. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, who had the distribution rights to the first Darko, won the right to release S. Darko domestically on home video.
Filming for S. Darko began on May 18, 2008. The crew used the high resolution digital Red One cameras. Musician Ed Harcourt
Ed Harcourt
Ed Harcourt is an English singer-songwriter. To date, he has released five studio albums, two EPs, and thirteen singles. His debut album, Here Be Monsters, was nominated for the 2001 Mercury Prize...
signed to provide the score for the film after he "read the script and loved it". For inspiration he listened to electronic music like Clint Mansell
Clint Mansell
Clinton Darryl "Clint" Mansell, is an English musician, composer, and former lead singer and guitarist of the band Pop Will Eat Itself....
's score for Requiem for a Dream
Lux Aeterna (Requiem for a Dream)
"Lux Aeterna" is a composition by Clint Mansell, the leitmotif of a movie from 2000, Requiem for a Dream, and the penultimate piece in the Requiem for a Dream score...
, and he hopes his score will be both "surreal and psychedelic just like the movie". S. Darko was filmed in Coalville, Utah
Coalville, Utah
Coalville is a city in Summit County, Utah, United States. It is part of the Salt Lake City, Utah Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 1,382 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Summit County...
and Magna, Utah
Magna, Utah
Magna is a census-designated place and township in Salt Lake County, Utah, United States. The population was 26,505 at the 2010 census, a moderate increase over the 2000 figure of 22,770...
.
Marketing
To promote the movie, a viral marketingViral marketing
Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...
campaign was launched consisting of three YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
videos.
The first video is footage from a surveillance camera, showing a dumpster falling from the sky and crushing a child.
The second video is from a conspiracy theorist expressing his beliefs that metallic objects which— with no apparent rational explanation— fall from the sky and lethally crush people are "Artifacts". "Artifacts", he explains, are from parallel universes that have accidentally made contact with our main universe. He believes that when the two universes meet again further down in time, both of them will be catastrophically destroyed, unless something is done to prevent this. Examples of such "Artifacts" are the jet engine that killed Donnie Darko, a manhole that decapitated a young girl, the aforementioned dumpster, and a meteor shower over Utah that resulted in the death of a local man. The meteor shower is actually one of the main events that happen in the feature film.
The third video is from a young girl responding to the creator of the previous video. She accuses him of being a fraud and a hack who doesn't understand what he's talking about, because he stole his theories from Roberta Sparrow's book, The Philosophy of Time Travel
The Philosophy of Time Travel
The Philosophy of Time Travel is the debut release from Theset in 2005.The album contains many references to the movie Donnie Darko in the lyrics and titles of songs. The name of the album was adopted in reference to a fictional text from the movie, entitled Philosophy of Time Travel...
, which was featured in the original movie. She then shows him another link between several of these disastrous events: the falling dumpster left a hole in the ground with a shape apparently similar to a drawing of Frank's mask retrieved from the Donnie Darko's psych file; and the same shape also appears in a hunk of twisted, wrought-iron metal pulled from the wreckage of the windmill that was destroyed by the meteor shower in Conejo Springs.
Critical reception
The A.V. Club gave the film an F, noting that the sequel took "a few simple, surface elements from Donnie DarkoDonnie Darko
Donnie Darko is a 2001 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Richard Kelly and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Noah Wyle, Jena Malone, and Mary McDonnell...
and fail[ed] spectacularly in trying to create a franchise".
The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
gave a somewhat better review, calling it average but stating that "The 'Darko' faithful are better off skipping the movie entirely and devoting their attention to the making-of featurette and the commentary track" and that they "have little faith that the moviegoers who once fell in love with Kelly's unique take on teen alienation will see S. Darko as anything more than a very minor pop cultural footnote."
None of the seven reviews indexed by Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
were favorable, resulting in a score of 0%.
Sequel
Bloody-Disgusting reported that 20th Century Fox20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
started working on developing a second sequel to Donnie Darko. The article claims that Richard Kelly
Richard Kelly (director)
James Richard Kelly is an American film director and writer, best known for writing and directing the cult classic Donnie Darko in 2001.-Early life:...
may have some involvement with this. Kelly has recently denied the rumor that he, or his company Darko Entertainment, is or will ever be involved with any sequels to Donnie Darko, and that they have no control over the sequels.
S. Darko director Chris Fisher
Chris Fisher
Chris Fisher , is an American director, writer, and producer.-Career:Fisher grew up in Newport Beach and studied philosophy and law at the University of Southern California, going on to work as a corporate lawyer in London before deciding to work in the entertainment industry...
when asked about a sequel replied: