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Donnie Darko: Good or Shit? (A Retrospective)

Started by Noodle Lizard, August 19, 2020, 07:50:12 PM

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Hundhoon

 premiered at Sundance 1999 and started a bidding war it scared the shit out of everybody who watched it was an independent movie made for 50.000 dollars that should have sunk, it made 400 million dollars,  Harry Knowles, Mark Kemode, Roger Ebert all wrote reviews detailing how they had never seen anything like it.

Shit Good Nose

Yeah, and Avatar and Titanic are two of the highest grossing films in cinema history.  Doesn't stop them both being terrible.

PlanktonSideburns

Kermode will nosh off anything that reminds him of a time his skin fitted

If you kicked him in the bollocks in a way that referenced cannibal holocaust he would thank you for it


Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: PlanktonSideburns on August 23, 2020, 05:55:31 PM
Kermode will nosh off anything that reminds him of a time his skin fitted

fucking lol.

idunnosomename

never seen it but im certain it's shit. fight club too

Cuellar

Quote from: Hundhoon on August 21, 2020, 11:15:42 PM
the Blair Witch Project is the scariest film ever made. i never get scared by cinema, ever, but that one....have to get that off my chest this thread is infuriating. i will never get those who were unaffected by the film. it was never meant to be a phenomenon, marketed through the wrong box.

Watched this on iPlayer for the first time the other day - did nothing for me. Maybe it would have been better in the cinema, but I couldn't make out any of the stuff that was apparently scaring them shitless. It was just them going "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT" "WHAT THE FUCK" "what the - WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT" "WE WENT THAT WAY" "OH MY GOD JUST...SERIOUSLY? SERIOUSLY?"

"JOSH"

"JOSH"

"JOSH"

"JOSH"

And then at the end, we're seeing it through HER camera, right? Because
Spoiler alert
it ends with Mike standing in the corner
[close]
. But you hear
Spoiler alert
HER screams in the distance, getting closer as 'she' walks towards the room where Mike is
[close]
so what's going on with that. Also
Spoiler alert
WHO/WHAT is the Blair Witch? Because the murderer who makes kids stand in the corner is a separate figure, isn't he? Nothing to do with the 'Witch' legend - at least, nothing to do with the hairy woman that mad woman claims to have seen
[close]

It's also possible I wasn't paying enough attention to the film.

Shit Good Nose

The camera and screams thing is easily explained - Mike is the sound man so he's got the boom and audio equipment.


But yeah - a bunch of annoying, stupid American yoofs getting lost in the woods and then scared by unseen forces does absolutely nothing for me.  The problem with most, if not all of these found footage films is that they're not able to build up any proper atmosphere on their own and they usually need something (like a faux documentary style framing structure - cf. Cannibal Holocaust or infamous Blair Witch precursor/rival The Last Broadcast [also not great]) to do a bit of scene setting.  That's why I've always found the Curse of the Blair Witch faux doc on the DVD FAR more unsettling than the film.

Cuellar

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on August 25, 2020, 11:37:07 PM
The camera and screams thing is easily explained - Mike is the sound man so he's got the boom and audio equipment.

Hmmmm - not convinced by this, because as I remember it you can hear her footsteps and attendant noises as if you're hearing the audio from her camera, but it's just her voice that seems to be coming from far off. I might need to review it though, because by this point I'd more or less lost interest in it.

Might give that Curse of... thing a watch.


Shit Good Nose

Quote from: Cuellar on August 25, 2020, 11:51:25 PM
Hmmmm - not convinced by this, because as I remember it you can hear her footsteps and attendant noises as if you're hearing the audio from her camera, but it's just her voice that seems to be coming from far off. I might need to review it though, because by this point I'd more or less lost interest in it.

Well, if memory serves one of the "goofs" is that they're using cameras which have got built-in mics.  (EDIT - that might be one of the goofs in The Last Broadcast)

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: Cuellar on August 25, 2020, 11:51:25 PM
Hmmmm - not convinced by this, because as I remember it you can hear her footsteps and attendant noises as if you're hearing the audio from her camera, but it's just her voice that seems to be coming from far off. I might need to review it though, because by this point I'd more or less lost interest in it.

Might give that Curse of... thing a watch.

He's got the DAT - once he gets knocked down all we hear is her from the distance getting closer, which is jarring since we're seeing her footage and aren't used to cameras not having in-built microphones, but authentic enough.

Don't want to turn this into a Blair Witch thread, but Rustin Parr (the child murderer) was said to be possessed by the Witch, or whatever other evil presence inhabited those woods - although supposedly his house was burned down decades ago, which makes for some interesting theories as to why it's still standing at the end of the film.

I can see the film seeming boring or uneventful on its own, but it's really just the "evidence", and it's still the most realistic example of found footage horror I've seen, precisely because you don't really see anything. Might be dull to some, but coupled with the lore they created around it through the faux-documentary, website and other marketing materials, it makes for a very impressive and unsettling experience overall. Definitely love-or-hate though.

Paul Calf

Quote from: Shit Good Nose on August 25, 2020, 11:37:07 PM
The camera and screams thing is easily explained - Mike is the sound man so he's got the boom and audio equipment.


But yeah - a bunch of annoying, stupid American yoofs getting lost in the woods and then scared by unseen forces does absolutely nothing for me.

Yeah. 10 minutes into the films and I was hoping that Cherie would just get it over with.

Well-marketed film that failed to live up to the hype.

touchingcloth

Quote from: Cuellar on August 25, 2020, 11:23:07 PM
Watched this on iPlayer for the first time the other day - did nothing for me. Maybe it would have been better in the cinema, but I couldn't make out any of the stuff that was apparently scaring them shitless. It was just them going "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT" "WHAT THE FUCK" "what the - WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT" "WE WENT THAT WAY" "OH MY GOD JUST...SERIOUSLY? SERIOUSLY?"

"JOSH"

"JOSH"

"JOSH"

"JOSH"

And then at the end, we're seeing it through HER camera, right? Because
Spoiler alert
it ends with Mike standing in the corner
[close]
. But you hear
Spoiler alert
HER screams in the distance, getting closer as 'she' walks towards the room where Mike is
[close]
so what's going on with that. Also
Spoiler alert
WHO/WHAT is the Blair Witch? Because the murderer who makes kids stand in the corner is a separate figure, isn't he? Nothing to do with the 'Witch' legend - at least, nothing to do with the hairy woman that mad woman claims to have seen
[close]

It's also possible I wasn't paying enough attention to the film.

On the "corner" ending, apparently that was filmed first (and without too much pre-planning) and then they shot extra footage for earlier in the film to talk about how Rustin Parr would make use of a corner.

It's all a bit hand wavy and probably not worth dwelling on who or what the witch is, because I don't think the film makers had a solid idea of that themselves, and reverse engineered the plot around the broad idea of a creepy mysterious presence in the woods.

Puce Moment

If that confused you, don't watch Man Bites Dog. There's loads of camera/mic separation moments.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Puce Moment on August 26, 2020, 11:32:05 AM
If that confused you, don't watch Man Bites Dog. There's loads of camera/mic separation moments.

I love how the sound man keeps getting shot.

Puce Moment

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on August 26, 2020, 01:59:17 PM
I love how the sound man keeps getting shot.

I haven't watched it in ages because, as much as I love it, I think some of the scenes just aren't going to be as funny.

"Pigeon, pigeon..."

surreal

Quote from: Noodle Lizard on August 20, 2020, 10:09:40 PMI still don't fully understand the hows-and-whens of how the film came to be. A young writer/director with no obvious connections has a weird sci-fi script; somehow Drew Barrymore gets attached, somehow he's allowed to direct it himself, and somehow it spawns the careers of the Gyllenhaal siblings (heirs to a throne, but otherwise unremarkable in Hollywood at the time).

There's a great making-of documentary included on the anniversary edition dvd called "Deus Ex Machina: The Philosophy of Donnie Darko" which is worth a watch if you like that kind of thing, sure you can track it down somewhere.  The movie was basically hit badly by 9/11 and didn;t really take off until it was released in the UK.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

He asked me to forcibly insert the lifeline exercise card into my anus!

rue the polywhirl

Just watched the theatrical cut after not seeing it for 15 years. Still holds up really well so put it firmly in the good camp. So much of the movie completely clicks, - the characters, concept, music, story etc. Not seen the directors cut or any other movies by Richard Kelly and will probably leave it at that so he's got a 100% record as far as I'm concerned.

kngen

I think TBWP is a great film, with occasional touches of brilliance (the aforementioned mic/camera split, for example) It's probably the last film i watched where I was drawn in enough to think: 'oh fuck's sake, please just find the car. Not another night ...'

Donnie Darko is of its time. If you ignore all the nonsense around it, it's still an incredibly watchable film. (If it's on TV, i'll always stick around for the Head Over Heels/walking in to school stoned sequence. Great little set piece, that.) Agree that the Director's Cut suggests it was a happy accident, for the most part. Thank god for good editors.

Captain Z

I've never seen Donnie Darko (what the hell kind of name is that?), all I know is that it lead to the most depressing Christmas #1, if not most depressing #1, ever, and for that I will never forgive it.

There's a guy on Youtube who converts songs from/to minor/major keys, and Mad World seems to defy the laws of music by sounding just as desolate in major.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lNzeKImVTE

druss

TBWP is the marmite of cinema. Although most people think marmite is just "alright", so it's not really.

I fucking love TBWP. I quite like marmite.

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: Elderly Sumo Prophecy on August 30, 2020, 04:51:45 PM
He asked me to forcibly insert the lifeline exercise card into my anus!

Kitty really does have all the best/funniest lines, doesn't she? I'm honestly struggling to think of a better representation of "that parent" in a film. Testament to Beth Grant's acting more than anything else, perhaps, I'm always happy when she turns up in something (usually playing the same exact character, admittedly). Her appearance(s) as Dabney's mum in Malcolm In The Middle are equally amusing.

I still think the "sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion" line is probably the best in the film. Such a bizarre collection of words, delivered with perfect dramatic sincerity.

QDRPHNC

I saw TBWP when it first came out and hated it immediately. Couldn't help but feel the film students weren't acting like people, they were acting like people they'd seen in movies.

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: QDRPHNC on September 01, 2020, 08:30:38 PM
I saw TBWP when it first came out and hated it immediately. Couldn't help but feel the film students weren't acting like people, they were acting like people they'd seen in movies.

Are there any subsequent found footage horror movies you do like? Because, in my estimation, TBWP is probably the most convincingly-acted of the lot of them - largely due to the fact that for a good deal of the shoot they genuinely were alone and scared and not quite sure what was going to happen. Only a few moments stick out as being anything other than that, for me, mostly from Heather (the most "actory" of the three).

QDRPHNC

Quote from: Noodle Lizard on September 01, 2020, 08:52:29 PM
Are there any subsequent found footage horror movies you do like? Because, in my estimation, TBWP is probably the most convincingly-acted of the lot of them - largely due to the fact that for a good deal of the shoot they genuinely were alone and scared and not quite sure what was going to happen. Only a few moments stick out as being anything other than that, for me, mostly from Heather (the most "actory" of the three).

It's not a genre that I would seek out, so no. I saw TBWP because like a lot of other people at the time, I thought the trailer was startling and unlike anything else.

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: QDRPHNC on September 02, 2020, 07:12:05 PM
It's not a genre that I would seek out, so no. I saw TBWP because like a lot of other people at the time, I thought the trailer was startling and unlike anything else.

Aye fair enough. I'm often confused by people complaining about the acting or what-have-you in TBWP but raving about Paranormal Activity or whatsuch. I think TBWP is at least convincing, for the most part, which can't be said for many of its imitators.

ElTwopo

Quote from: Captain Z on August 31, 2020, 12:39:19 AM
I've never seen Donnie Darko (what the hell kind of name is that?), all I know is that it lead to the most depressing Christmas #1, if not most depressing #1, ever, and for that I will never forgive it.

There's a guy on Youtube who converts songs from/to minor/major keys, and Mad World seems to defy the laws of music by sounding just as desolate in major.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lNzeKImVTE

Following on from this, is Donnie Darko actually responsible for every fucking dog-shit advert that features a slowed down/acoustic/wispy-voiced version of a pop/rock standard from the eighties, thanks to Gary Jules' version of Mad World? That song has to be ground zero for the shite that still persists today, surely? I didn't mind the film, but the absolute evil inflicted on the populace as a result of that record should not be underestimated.