Donnie Darko 2 : L'Héritage du sang

I am an oddball in that I have NOT seen "Donnie Darko" yet I watched "S. Darko". This is because I have an odd obsession--to see as many of the films from the Bottom 100 list on IMDB as I can. I also decided NOT to see the original film because from what I read, folks who loved the original (and it seems to have a cult-like following) absolutely hated this sequel...and I wanted to see if the sequel might be better if you never saw the first. So is this film bad enough to be #88 on the list? No...while it IS a terrible film in many ways, there are definitely many worse films that this one...not exactly a glowing endorsement.

The biggest problem about the film are the two female leads. Both play characters who are annoying jerks....and any film with annoying jerks in the lead faces an uphill battle. In addition, the acting of many (including one of the male leads) is terrible. They or the director seem to think that talking monotone and emoting very little is the epitome of cool. Instead, I just found the acting (like the characters) to be super-annoying.

As far as the plot goes, there are a lot of weird dream-like warnings about some pending apocalypse in a rural town in the American West (it was filmed in Utah). The special effects were very interesting...but the story was confusing and silly.

Overall, a film that I didn't like at all but TECHNICALLY it isn't completely terrible.

What? Oh S Darko? I thought you said Donnie Darko. Oh...well that changes things. Um... Let me take all of that back then.

OK on a serious note there are a lot of posts on here that will say that they A.) Were huge fans of Donnie Darko B.) Thought the girls were hot and scantily clad C.) Thought the effects were not so special d.) Thought this was kind of rehashed

I agree with all of these statements. I also tried looking at it like it wasn't involved with the first movie at all and you end up with a no so brilliant, watered down less than mediocre movie. The problem is this is a Donnie Darko movie. You have fans who have watched the original over and over, read countless summaries of not only the movie but the "mechanics" of how that universe worked and then came to your own conclusions. You have fans that (myself included) donned (no pun intended) the skeleton costume and grey hoodie for Halloween. When you try to add to a cult phenomenon like Donnie Darko, unless you do your homework, you are going to fall flat.

To me this movie felt like someone watched Donnie a few times, wrote down some key elements from the movie in a notebook and then tried to incorporate it into a new movie.

As a huge fan of the original I can't find myself "hating it" in the same way that I can't hate the Star Wars prequels, so I gave it a 3 out of 10. I don't want to betray it even though it betrays the original and its fans. It was by no means one of the worst movies I have ever seen, but it is a let down of a sequel. I also gave it a 3 because I understand what this movie was trying to do (involving others in the timeline plot to change destinies) but I don't think it was done well. You still have some of the mechanics involved in the first, although altered. Even the characters are somewhat the same (the sexual deviant priest vs the sexual deviant motivational speaker, etc)

Even some of the lines used are to try to get a reaction from original fans. It just comes off as a bad rip off.

When you were done watching the original, you felt as though you wanted to watch it again and learn more. You felt a sense of witnessing something special.

Oh my gosh. Why? I just don't get it. This has got to be one of the worst sequels ever made. Lets look at the list and take a look at everything wrong with this film. And by the way let me say i AM a big fan of Donnie Darko.

1. The acting is almost unbearable. 2. The story sucks... well if you even want to call it a story. 3. its so confusing and does not even come together in the end. 4. The characters are extremely unlikable if you liked these characters my heart goes out to you... but you have no brain. 5. SO MUCH LAME CGI There you go the top five list of why this movie is so awful. I give this film a F.

S. Darko is one of many sequels that has no reason to have been created at all. But even if one puts the original film out-of-mind, and only look at the sequel on it's own merits, the movie still falls completely flat.

The film picks up 7 years after the original left off, Samantha Darko and her friend Corey are on a cross-country trip heading for Los Angeles. When car problems leave them stuck in a little town by the name of Conejo Springs (which is populated by a community of horribly written character's), the girls are forced to mingle with the townies, and Corey finds herself at home with the boozy losers, while Samantha, still in pain over the death of her brother (Donnie), finds herself drawn to the Outsider by the name of Iraq Jack, a disturbed Gulf War vet who has learned through bizarre visions that the world is coming to an end on July 4th, 1995.

It seems that Nathan Atkins is a fan of Richard Kelly's work (including Southland Tales because the character of Iraq Jack seems similar to the character 'Pilot Abilene' & the end of the world date being on 'July 4th') But Atkins can't write believable dialogue to save his life. And the director 'Chris Fisher' doesn't seem to understand what made the original film so good, which was the feeling of being able to connect with the characters going through something this crazy. And if the audience doesn't care about the characters on-screen it becomes very hard for them to feel any effect of the narrative structure.

S. Darko is a hollow cash-grab by producers who must have never understood what Kelly was going for, but they now control the rights to the Darko universe, and they're hoping to collect any profit from this wannabe Donnie Darko replica.

well where do i begin. i never expected much from this film but i hoped for so much more than i got. the plot is randomly all over the place with hints of donnie darko crow bared in to make it relevant to the original(and probably the idea was to interest fans of the original). the acting is very wooden, the story is totally rambling and the end is stupid in so many ways. it seems very much like the makers have gone way out of the way to appeal to fans of the original, well i am very much one of those fans and i hated it with more than a passion, i only found out about this movie about an hour before i sat down to watch it, i wish i never found out about it.its obvious why it went straight to DVD. so if you are a fan of the original stay away from this one and just keep on loving donnie darko.