The red Trans Am's headlights illuminate Roberta Sparrow, who is standing in the middle of the road reading Donnie's letter. The car swerves to avoid her and runs over Gretchen, killing her. The thugs run away while Donnie races to Gretchen's side. Two guys step out of the car: a guy in a clown costume and Frank, dressed in his rabbit suit, his mask off. "Is she dead?" a terrified Frank asks. He seems to have never met Donnie before. Donnie shoots him through the right eye.
Roberta Sparrow approaches Donnie. "The storm is coming," she says. "You must hurry."
It's the early morning. Donnie carries Gretchen's body back to the house, loads her in the car and looks up at the eerie black cloud hovering over the house. He drives to the mountains where he began the film and sits on his car's hood. We hear Frank's voice say, "I'm going home." In the distance, a black funnel cloud hangs over Middlesex; a tiny plane flies toward the cloud. Donnie stares at the horizon.
We see Donnie's mom and sister on the plane; there is an explosion and the passengers begin to scream. The jet engine falls through a tunnel in the clouds. We hear Gretchen's voice repeating something she said earlier in the film: "What if you could go back in time and take those hours of pain and darkness and replace them with something better?" We see pixilated representations of the events of the past 28 days, running in reverse. Time flows backward while we hear Donnie's letter to Roberta Sparrow. "I can only hope the answers will come to me in my dreams," he says.
We see Donnie in his bedroom, laughing. It's Oct. 2 again, a little after midnight. Elizabeth comes through the front door and her date honks his horn outside. Donnie is lying in bed when the jet engine crashes through his room.
Dr. Thurman wakes up gasping. Ms. Pomeroy and Dr. Monnitoff are in bed together; he is awake, staring at the ceiling. Jim Cunningham weeps in his bed. Mrs. Farmer looks aghast. Amid drawings and models of rabbit masks, Frank stares moodily into space.
The next morning, Gretchen rides her bike past the Darko house. A truck carts off the smoking engine. She asks a neighborhood kid what happened and he tells her a boy named Donnie Darko died. Donnie's mother is standing in the front yard amid her weeping family, smoking a cigarette. Gretchen cautiously waves; Donnie's mom waves back. The boy waves too.
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What the hell just happened?
The vast majority of "Donnie Darko" takes place in a parallel universe. From the moment the clock in the Darko house strikes midnight, 10 minutes into the film, right up to Donnie's hysterical laughter in bed, the setting of the film is Tangent Middlesex, a parallel dimension, spontaneously created, which exists only during the 28 days that cover the majority of the film's action. The through-line of the film is Donnie Darko's quest to erase the Tangent Universe before it destroys the world.
To understand what actually occurs in "Donnie Darko," it helps to have read "The Philosophy of Time Travel," by Roberta Sparrow. This is difficult in that the book is an imaginary one, written by a fictional character. Luckily, much of the book's text is included on the film's Web site and DVD and is now incorporated into the director's cut.
"The Philosophy of Time Travel" explains that time, while usually stable, will occasionally become corrupted for reasons unknown to all. When this happens, a Tangent Universe is created -- an alternate reality parallel to the primary universe in which we all live. "If a Tangent Universe occurs," Sparrow writes, "it will be highly unstable, sustaining itself for no longer than several weeks. Eventually it will collapse upon itself, forming a black hole within the Primary Universe capable of destroying all existence." During that collapse, a time-space vortex will form that leads back to the birth of the Tangent Universe.
In a nutshell, this is precisely what the hell happens in "Donnie Darko." At midnight on Oct. 2, 1988, a Tangent Universe is spontaneously created, centered in Middlesex, Va. This Tangent Universe threatens the existence of life as we know it; it falls to one person to do whatever necessary to put the world back in order and keep the Tangent Universe from destroying the real world when it collapses in 28 days. That person -- that superhero -- is, of course, Donnie Darko: a 16-year-old with emotional problems, a history of arson, and bedroom eyes.
The Artifact
Hand in hand with the creation of a Tangent Universe, writes Roberta Sparrow, is the spontaneous appearance of an Artifact. Made out of metal, this artifact will inexplicably show up near the epicenter of the Tangent Universe; in order for disaster to be averted, the Artifact must be sent through the time vortex back to the Primary Universe -- back to before the split in dimensions occurred. The Artifact in Tangent Middlesex, of course, is a gigantic freaking jet engine that falls out of the sky.
The Living Receiver
That's Donnie, in the words of "The Philosophy of Time Travel": the Living Receiver. He's the chosen one, picked (seemingly at random) to return the Artifact to the Primary Universe in order to avert catastrophe. Being the Living Receiver has advantages and disadvantages: You get superpowers, like strength, telekinesis and the ability to see into the future, but you also get horrifying hallucinations and the people around you tend to fear and attack you.
Next page: Chosen by whom? Manipulated by whom? And what's with the 6-foot-tall rabbit?
