Plot: Donnie Darko gets along badly with his family, with his teachers and with his classmates; but he does manage to find a sympathetic friend in Gretchen, who agrees to date him; and he has a compassionate psychiatrist, who discovers hypnosis is the means to unlock hidden secrets. His other companion may not be a true ally. Donnie has a friend named Frank, who is either a large purple bunny, or man in a large purple bunny costume. Either way, Donnie is the only one who can see him. When an engine falls off a plane and destroys his room, Donnie is not there. Both the event, and Donnie's escape, seem to have been caused by supernatural events. Donnie's mental illness, if such it is, may never allow him to find out for sure.

Tags: 1980s, airplane accident, allegory, altering history, alternative history, alternative timeline, american football, arson, avant garde, axe, based on short story, bathroom, beer, bicycle, bottle, car accident, catcher in the rye, cellar door, chalkboard, change history, character name in title, child pornography, closet, clown, cocaine, communist agent, confusion, costume, count down, critically acclaimed, dark hero, death, debate, debut film, deceiving appearance, defacing property, demonic grin, destiny, deus ex machina, disturbed individual, drawing, dream, ego, end of the world, espionage, evil dead, excrement, fate, fire, flooding, freudian, god, good versus evil, gun, halloween, halloween party, hallucination, high school, homage, hypnosis, imaginary friend, independent film, insanity, investigation, irony, jesus christ, kissing, knife, life, life death situation, love, lust, masturbation, medication, messiah, metaphor, morality, mortality, motivational speaker, murder, new wave, no opening credits, object falling from sky, pantry, parallel time, parallel universe, parallel world, paranoid schizophrenia, party, police, police car, politics, prophecy, prophet motive, psychiatrist, psychology, psychotherapy, psychotic, rabbit, rabbit suit, real life siblings as fictional siblings, religion, revenge, reverse footage, sabotage, sanity, savior, scar, schizophrenia, school, school project, self help guru, shot in the eye, sleepwalking, smurf, soul, spoiler in keywords, stalker, stepfather, suburb, suburban american life, suburbia, suicide, superego, surreal, surrealism, switchblade, teacher, teenage romance, terrorism, time lapse photography, time travel, time warp, title spoken by character, tragedy, troubled teen, vandalism, virginia, virtuality, vision, vulgarity, show all tags.