S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale
	Rating
	Type	Video On Demand
	Release Date	2009-05-12
	Actor	Jackson Rathbone; Ed Westwick; Elizabeth Berkley; Briana Evigan; Daveigh Chase;
	Director	Chris Fisher;
	Length	104 minutes
	Special Price
	Lowest New Price	$9.99
Categories
Drama  Thrillers  Science Fiction & Fantasy  20th Century Fox
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Description
Seven years afterwards her brother's death, Samantha Darko locates herself stranded in a small desert town afterwards her car breaks down where she is plagued by bizarre visions telling of the universe's end.
Customer Reviews
Wake up - start to live again   2010-07-28
By M. C. H. Banen (Sittard, Limburg Netherlands)
I just saw this movie and I'm a big fan of Donnie Darko. I read mixed reviews and one said 'see it as an individual film' and not as a sequel to Donnie Darko. So I sat down expecting... nothing actually. And then I just saw a wonderful movie. Some twists reminded me of Donnie Darko but it's a strong film on it's own. Yeah, I liked it a lot !
Poorly thought out sequel, not terrible for a straight to DVD release though   2010-07-26
By J. Galbraith (Florida)
Okay, this is a straight to video release to start with, so nobody is expecting oscar gold here. The only possible demographic this movie is catering to is fans of Donnie Darko. This movie cannot be viewed on it's own, because the whole premise of this movie is that we've seen Donnie Darko. Having said that, this movie insults my intelligence. It takes a movie that requires you to think about it, and asks that you just mindlessly absorb the sequel and ooh and ahh at it's rehashed images of the original. If anyone was smart enough to understand Donnie Darko, how can they be stupid enough to buy anything this movie is trying to sell? So Samantha Darko has a drawing that Donnie did of Frank, who, in the timeline that survived in the first movie, never existed in the first place. She also has a book that, again, was never given to Donnie in the timeline that she is from. So if we just ignore those two, glaring omissions to logic, we can continue to watch the movie. The acting is not horrible for a straight to video release (you don't agree? go watch any of the 35 straight to video movies Steven Segal has put out in the last few years and then tell me this is horrible acting) and I can somewhat be entertained by the first portion of the movie. The second half of the movie is really just rehashing some scenes from Donnie Darko, over and over, for no real apparent reason. **Spoilers (haha) ahead** They really liked filming the silent montage of various scenes in the movie in reverse, as this was done multiple times. The main character dies at least twice, and all sorts of other characters seem to have Donnies powers of time travel. Why? Good question. I have no idea. The super-nerd gets meteroite-enhanced powers of uhhhh, festering sores, and then promptly disappears and is not heard from again, nor is any explaination given as to why any of that is happening. Everything is heavily based on Roberta Sparrow's Philosophy of Time Travel, which we could only know anything about if we'd seen not just Donnie Darko, but the Directors cut of Donnie Darko, which actually explained what was going on. So to say I'm not viewing this movie on it's own, only comparing it to Donnie Darko, well, if I hadn't seen Donnie Darko, I would have absolutely no idea what anything in this movie was even attempting to portray, so you kind of have to have seen the original. If this movie had been anything more than a poor attempt at re-hashing a great movie it may have stood a chance. It is obviously just a cash grab aimed at fans of Donnie Darko, and should in no way be seen as a decent movie on it's own. I was just curious, so I rented it, and it wasn't as bad as a lot of people said it was (see, I gave it 2 stars?) but it was by no means a good movie, or a worthy sequel. You want a good sequel to a cult hit? Go see Boondock Saints 2.
Just what I expected, and that was awful   2010-04-18
By Crystal M. (Missouri, US)
Did you like Donnie Darko? Are you curious about this sequal? Well please don't buy this awful movie. It should have never been made. As you know, sequals are almost always worse than the original, and so is this one. Even with low expectations, the low quality of this movie managed to surprise me. First off, the overall tone of the movie is unbearable. The characters are generic and their lines are predictably art filmy. It is long, boring, has unlikable characters, and worse of all destroys the meaning behind the original.
"I'm alive, I'm alone, and I never wanted to be either of those"   2010-04-06
By Mike Schorn (APO, AE United States)
To be fair, I have to admit that "S. Darko" is at a disadvantage to begin with simply for being the sequel to one of the most defining cult films of my generation. How do you begin to follow up a film that countless folks adore and identify with?... Well, I doubt we'll ever know, since the overpowering blunder of this movie ought to guarantee that nobody's about to try to make another sequel for a long time. Plainly, "S. Darko" is a poorly-contrived mess: imagine a director taking an ambitious fanfiction as his plot foundation, realizing halfway through production that the story is too inconsistent and scatterbrained for its own good, and trying to patch up its inefficiencies with numerous go-nowhere references from the original Donnie Darko in hopes that allusions alone would make it a better movie - that, in a nutshell, is what this film feels like. The story: taking place seven years after the events of the first movie, a haunted Samantha Darko (Daveigh Chase) escapes her home on a cross-country trip with her wild friend Corey (Briana Evigan, Step Up 2 The Streets). When their car breaks down outside of a small desert town and they're left without connections while waiting for repairs, both girls find themselves caught up in a strange series of events that include a meteorite destroying a windmill, prophetic dreams, a disturbed Gulf War veteran (James Lafferty, "One Tree Hill"), and a missing child - all of which are leading up to the inevitable end of the world. I'm not a hardcore fan of the first movie, so I won't pretend to know whether the science of this one comes together as cleanly as it apparently did in the original. However, there's no denying that it feels contrived: while the first movie featured excellent pacing and practiced moderation with its weirdness, it seems like the director of this one - Chris Fisher (Nightstalker) - took his favorite parts of the first one and overdid them to death, to the point that there's absolutely nothing special or remarkable about the supernatural occurrences. No less than three Frank-type characters walk around speaking with weird vocal effects, jarring time-rewinds happen twice so certain characters can be brought back from death from minutes prior, Sam glows underwater and sees CGI horses in the clouds...and it all seems to mean very little, since the conclusion has very little universal weight and certainly doesn't explain what greater good has come of this adventure. To its credit, "S. Darko" is remarkably good-looking for a low-budget flick, with great production values and featuring a unique cast that includes Ed Westwick ("Gossip Girl"), John Hawkes (Deadwood: The Complete Series), Jackson Rathbone (Twilight series), Elizabeth Berkley (Showgirls), and Matthew Davis (What About Brian - The Complete Series)...but in the end, it all means very little since minimal effort has been focused toward crafting something original. It really seems like the director wised up to the how mediocre the screenplay was halfway through, but instead of attempting an emergency rewrite, he started inserting references to the original film left and right, as though hoping that viewers would get lost in reminiscent rapture and stop paying attention to how silly what they're watching is. Little things like sped-up cloudscapes and quotes galore (e.g. "They made me do it", "Burn it to the ground") stand in the foreground of individual scenes (e.g. sitting in an empty movie theater) and bigger plot devices (e.g. a benevolent figure revealed as a pervert) ripped directly from the original movie. Come on! - did we really wait eight years just to watch a rehash of the first film? Apparently... I must admit, I knew that "Donnie Darko" was too singular a movie to have any kind of follow-up do it justice, but nevertheless, it was cool to imagine what such an attempt would bring. Well, now I know, but it's probably for the best if most other people remain ignorant. Unless you absolutely loved the Samantha character from the first film and are dying to know what she's like as a weirdo teenager, stay away...and hey, if you're not interested in being disappointed to find out what Samantha's like as a weirdo teenager, stay away for that reason, too.
horrible movie, good seller   2010-03-14
By Elise Cullinane (Severna Park, Maryland United States)
this movie is absolutely awful. they tried to warp the idea of donnie darko and they totally failed. DO NOT WATCH DO NOT BUY. I did recieve the movie in great condition and very quickly, thanks for prompt delivery!