Donny Darko

A recurring theme in Donny Darko is the idea of the savior. In the movie, Donny suffers from some form of schizophrenia and is plagued by sleep walking and vivid hallucinations of a six-foot tall rabbit named Frank that speaks to him. Despite being a very creepy figure that Donny makes sure not to trust, Frank is in a way Donny’s savior in the beginning of the film because he coaxes him outside in his sleep on the night that a jet engine fell into his room, which of course would have killed him. After this event, Donny starts to reluctantly do the bad things that Frank tells him to and they mostly have good results. He breaks the water main at his school which floods it and ends up causing him to meet his girlfriend Gretchen, then burns down the house of a local author who gets busted for being a pedophile because of the fire. When Donny has a knife up to his throat, a car comes flying down the road and he mumbles “Deus ex machina” which is a term describing a higher power coming down to save an otherwise helpless situation. When this “savior” steps out of the car we see that it was Frank behind the wheel. Donny then shoots him in the eye for running over and killing Gretchen. In the end, Donny ends up taking the place of the savior by allowing himself to be crushed by the jet engine to ensure that none of these terrible events unfold.