s. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale
Genre: Sci-Fi/Sequel
Directed by: Chris Fisher
Run time: 103 minutes
Rating: R
Format: Blu-Ray

The Lowdown: Huh?

Why?

What the…?

Here’s a tip for anyone who loved Richard Kelly’s mind-screw cult classic “Donnie Darko”: Don’t touch this terrible not-really-sequel, not-even-good bastard spawn of a rip-off.

It will only make you mad. Really mad.

For anyone who hasn’t seen “Donnie Darko,” and somehow happens to watch this piece of crap, do not judge Richard Kelly’s mind-screw cult classic based on your opinion of “s. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale.”

For everyone else, including friends of director Chris Fisher, don’t read the rest of this review. It will only make you mad. Really mad.

Who the hell gave the thumbs-up, A-ok to this mess? And did they even bother to watch the original source material before deciding that there was more to tell of the sad, fated time-space journey of Donnie, Frank and Roberta Sparrow?

Fisher has basically urinated on the brilliance of “Donnie Darko” by making a film that isn’t a sequel as much as a cobbled together mess that pulls pieces of “Donnie” haphazardly – like a cook using whatever is in the cupboard to make a crap pie.

First, there’s the returning Daveigh Chase as Samantha, the s. Darko of the title, whose brief but cult-tastic turn in Sparklemotion helped set the stage for the airplane engine that plummets to earth, killing her brother.

She barely mentions him for about half of the film. Instead, she’s on a roadtrip with friend Corey (Briana Evigan, very hot) to California to become dancers (ie, strippers). Samantha is all grown up and pretty sexy, but she’s not fleshed out enough to wrap an entire film around.

Frank the Bunny reappears, this time as some weird boogeyman/harbinger of doom whose awesome visage is now forged in metal by Iraq Jack (James Lafferty), who is made to look as much like Jake Gyllenhaal as possible. Turns out, Jack is a descendant of Roberta Sparrow…HUH?...and he too has prophetic visions of the end of the world.

Then there’s Randy (Ed Westwick), the “Gossip Girl” heartthrob, who exists for no reason other than to look like some weak James Dean rip-off and tell a sad story about his brother mysteriously disappearing.

It seems a lot of people have disappeared, or died, from the same bizarre circumstances that Samantha Darko’s brother encountered. All manner of objects have fallen from the sky and crushed them.

None of this is explained very well, of course.

And we haven’t even gotten to the part where Samantha basically becomes Frank the Bunny and foretells the death of Corey, who is then miraculously resurrected through some unexplained tear in the space-time continuum and then Samantha dies and…oh hell, you get the idea that none of this makes any sense.

Everything culminates in an apocalyptic meteor shower that isn’t very apocalyptic and really does little to further the plotline or explain why or what this has to do with Donnie Darko.

Imagine if Martin Scorsese had been kept out of the loop and some mediocre director had decided to make “J. La Motta,” a sequel of sorts to Scorses’s Oscar-winning biopic of boxer Jake La Motta, only this time it was told through the eyes of Joe Pesci’s Joey La Motta.

Yeah, it would have sucked as bad as “s. Darko.”

Possibly.

You don’t have to travel forward in time to know that few movies, lame-brained sequels or not, have ever blown as bad as this one.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Yes.
Nudity – Brief.
Gore – Minimal.
Drug use – Yes.
Bad Guys/Killers – Chris Fisher. Bad bad bad man.
Buy/Rent – Neither.
Blu-Ray Bonus Features – Filmmaker commentary, deleted scenes and a making-of documentary.
On the Web – http://www.sdarko.com/
Release Date – May 12, 2009