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Actually, it's not that bad. It has inspired a lot of speculation, and every theory comes up with flaws that seem to deconstruct it. My own theory is that it's just a bad script with a lot of holes, thus no real correct interpretation, but at it's heart it raises that whole series of conundrums around whether the past can be changed and what time is in the first place. The complexity of the film is in the subject itself, not the script, which often seems to be more concerned with "weirding out" the audience.
Great performances, though, and nice character development. Within the concept of the film--that a series of events must happen to save the universe--the writing and staging is intriquing and evocative.
SPOILER
The basic idea seems to be that a flaw in time has caused a jet engine to crash into Donnie's house a month early, thus creating a tangential universe which will destroy itself and the real universe if certain issues aren't resolved before the jet engine falls off the plane a month later. Donnie is warned by Frank (the rabbit) to leave his room, thus, he survives the accident. He then must make sure a series of events happen that bring about the right conditions for the plane crash 28 days later. So he meets his girlfriend, and guided by Frank does stuff that causes him to wind up with his girlfriend, exposes the pedaphile self-help guru, that causes the teacher to back out of her plans, that causes the mother and daughter to be on the plane that crashes. Meanwhile, Donnie and his girlfriend must do things that lead to her death, and Frank's death, in the bizarre accident that kills them. Then... the movie just doesn't eplain. Somehow this causes the engine to fall off the plane, go back in time, and kill Donnie, thus saving his family and his girlfriend and Frank. It never explains why Donnie had to make sure everyone else died to correct the time path. The most obvious answer would be that these events were required to make the engine fall off the plane, and so Donnie had to be alive to make them happen, but the engine went back in time and killed him, thus none of the events could happen and the universe was destroyed by getting a headache trying to figure it out. (Typical time-travel movie about how changing one thing causes the whole future to be destroyed). The problem with that theory is that it doesn't explain why Donnie's family is alive again after the event, since the whole point would have been to make sure they were on the plane to die. Maybe Donnie prevented the whole plane crash from happening, but that doesn't make sense, either, since the engine still kills him.
I just think the writer didn't care. He just came up with some time travel scenarios that he knew would keep people thinking incircles, and he wrote a script around them without any firm idea of what happened. But I could be wrong. He could have some secret he just didn't bother to tell anyone that would make the whole thing work. In which case he's a sadist.
Anyway, the whole film reminds me in a perverse way of Magnolia. Lots of neat character development and questions about right, wrong, relevancy, and destiny. Lots of symbolism. If you try to work out what really happened, though, you get nowhere. The whole movie was about Donnie sacrificing himself to save the universe ("Donnie Darko--that sounds like the name of a superhero.") through some weird time hole scenario. After that, I just get a headache. I would never recommend that film to anyone, but I did like it.
And Drew Barrymore was so damned cool in it.
Just my analysis. Probably wrong, as always. This is the result of my job not being as time-consuming as it should be.
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