Donnie Darko 2 : L'Héritage du sang

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.

Before anyone gets on their high horse saying I am one of those Donnie Darko fans not giving this new movie a chance, I gave this film a chance and spent the five bucks to rent it straight away after learning it existed.

The only good thing about this film is that it ended. OK, that may be harsh, the film's colour and surrounding landscape it unfolds in is pretty cool but that is it. The only other interesting elements, whether technical in filming style or plot-wise of this film, were ripped straight from the first film. What was cool in Donnie Darko is merely imitation here.

The plot is weak and has logic holes which fail the Donnie Darko/tangent universe test from the first film. As fans of the original we cannot help but compare the two films because s.Darko centres on characters and memories from the first one and rotates on the principles that drove the original as well. How can you not compare the two? What almost borders on insulting in this film are the straight repetitions of acts, scenes and quirky characters from the first one replicated in this one. I don't want to spoil the film if you are drawn to sit and endure it but you'll see what I mean, you cannot miss the weak, formulaic repetition, especially if you are a fan of the original.

Basically, s.Darko is the same model car like Donnie Darko but has different paint colour and chokes along on a four-cylinder engine whereas the first one rumbled along on six.

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.

I was honestly shocked that this film was actually worse than I was expecting it to be. It really seems like the writer and director got hired for the job, watched about half of the first film before they got bored, and then set off to make something roughly similar. Awful dialogue, careless (and painfully obvious) anachronisms, and some jaw-droppingly bad CG effects. I'd be willing to bet they had more money to make this than Richard Kelly had to work with on the original, and none of it's up on the screen. Maybe it cost them a lot of money to license "Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe" by Whale.

*cough* Anyway, as far as cash-grab sequels go this has to be one of the all-time worst. A suggestion: tape an episode of "One Tree Hill" or "Gossip Girl," then put on some red-and-blue 3D glasses, and pretend one of the cast members is saying stuff like "Remember the future" and "My farts taste like cherries." Then watch the show on rewind for about twenty minutes and do it all over again. Repeat for 102 minutes total, and you've had roughly the same experience. Utterly shameful.