Occasional Movie Reviews:
s. Darko

Well, if you liked Donnie Darko, then...well, you'll probably want to stay away from the sequel, s. Darko. It's just not in the same league.

Now, let me say that I did finish watching it, whereas I frequently just stop DVDs that really suck...unless they suck so bad as to be fun. This fell into neither of those categories at least. I liked the Darkoesque attempt to be creepy and enigmatic and...oh, hell, maybe I was just waiting for the scary bunny... F*cking rabbit freaked the bejebus out of me in the first movie. (Personally, I hypothesize that that's where Anya's fear of bunnies originates...)

There's some good stuff, but overall, the thing just doesn't work. Some bad acting and what I'd guess is bad directing (tho my grasp us such filmy things is virtually nonexistent). There's one pretty good twisty bit such that: as soon as it happens, you slap yourself on the forehead and revel in your own stupidity for not anticipating it. Or at least I did. But I'm notoriously stupid in movies, so there's a good change you'll see it coming.

The soundtrack is pretty good--Catherine Wheel, Chemical Brothers, other notables I'm less wild about, e.g. Dead Can Dance...and, weirdly, Whale.

s. Darko just isn't the same kind of flick as Donnie Darko, though it aims to be. The former ends up being--pretty much anyway-- just an unusually restrained and unusual B-ish, teen-ish horror movie. But mere regression to the mean made it unlikely that a sequel would be in the same league as the original, I guess.