“Donnie Darko” is a small and precious film that probably won’t find a big audience. The film keeps its considerable powers well in reserve, jabbing when most other films would go for the knockout punch. But you wind up on the canvas anyhow, and that’s the mark of a truly original work. The film’s adroit mixture of everyday banalities with dark supernatural forces is as good or better than any Stephen King movie, and its real themes— love, empathy, and spiritual paths— are worth more than a hundred “American Beauties”.

I’ve used the word ‘original’, but superficially “Donnie Darko” is drawn from a number of cinematic sources that are fairly easy to spot. The scenes of suburbia are right out of the teenage fantasy adventures of the 1980s (appropriately, since the film is set in 1988). Spielberg, Zemeckis, Johnston, they’re all here (as is the nefarious hand of Drew Barrymore, the producer, who seems to specialize in compiling 80s-heavy soundtracks for her movies; I admit she does score points here for including Echo And The Bunnymen and Joy Division) . If you look closely you’ll catch glimpses of “E.T.” (the kids urgently speeding through the streets on their bikes), “Back To The Future” (which is directly alluded to), “Gremlins”, the John Hughes canon, and even “The Karate Kid”.

What’s wonderful is Kelly’s obvious affection for this middle-class mise en scene, the same affection found in the work of the aforementioned directors. Spielberg’s characters, for instance, want to transcend their surroundings but they also love them: “E.T” is as much a valentine to Spielberg’s middle-class upbringing as it is an exercise in sci-fi wonder. In “Donnie Darko”, the Darkos are not a dysfunctional family at all.  Early on, at the dinner table, things start off looking like a typical depiction of the modern family— all arguing, misunderstandings, kids’ sullen resentment of authority, morally and intellectually dead parents whose rule is strictly laissez faire if not altogether absent— but then there are also smiles and wry looks that hint at a silent love that isn’t so deeply buried. The Darkos, in fact, are one of the happiest families you’ll see on film.

Their happiness eventually becomes an important clue as to what this movie is really about.  “Donnie Darko” is a lot closer in spirit to a movie like “Ordinary People” than, say, “Final Destination” or some other vapid teen thriller. Together the Darkos are all trying their best to learn how to love each other, and they know that’s a long and difficult process rather than a simple task. Donnie has real problems— the kid really is something of a psychotic, he really is dangerous in a clinical sense— and I love that the movie allowed him his troubles without romanticizing them. A River Phoenix movie this isn’t. His family wants him to get well, but realistically they are also more than a little afraid of what he might do.

Donnie is afraid that the world is dying, somehow or other, and wants to save it. “Donnie Darko, what kind of a name is that?” asks his girlfriend Gretchen. “Are you some kind of superhero?” He answers drily: “What makes you think I’m not?” His desire to save his parents, his friends, and everyone else is deeply rooted in some strange cocktail of unhappiness, eros and paranoia; a psychologist could probably explain his complex emotions better than I can. Frank, Donnie’s supernatural guide, powers the movie along quite nicely. The evil-looking bunny suit is creepy, and the film expertly tantalizes as the violence slowly inches from periphery to foreground. As a supernatural suspense tale, Kelly gives us our two bits’ worth.

Then something funny happens. Right about the time most inferior horror movies would jolt you with jack-in-the-box scares, “Donnie Darko” reveals itself as to be a spiritual journey undertaken by a boy who is moved less by fear or insanity than by love. That’s right— “Donnie Darko” is a horror movie whose entire mechanism is there to build to an act of love. And not just any act of love. Donnie’s story ends in an act of pseudo-Christian martyrdom that creates one of the more bizarre feel-good endings in movie history. And I don’t think I’m wrong bringing up the Big C. Director Richard Kelly tips his hand in a few places, notably in the question of “Do you believe in God?” coming up several times and also in the Christ-on-the-cross pose Donnie gives the camera on his big night.

The most telling clue of all is the film title on the marquee of the Aero moviehouse, where Donnie and Gretchen see “Evil Dead” on Halloween night. Going in, only “Evil Dead” is visible on the marquee, but when Donnie walks out, Kelly reveals the other half of the double feature: “The Last Temptation of Christ”. All the talk of wormholes and time travel is really a smokescreen for Donnie’s own temptation on the cross, so to speak, exactly as it happens in Scorsese’s film. In a hallucination, or a trip into a parallel universe, Christ comes down off the cross, refusing God’s plan, only to understand in the end that His place was on the cross, to die at that moment and not later. Donnie’s fate is similar, and like Scorsese’s Christ his spiritual growth is complete only when he understands and joyfully embraces his own role in God’s plan. His is a supreme sacrifice made out of love for everyone else; “Love Will Tear Us Apart” isn’t shimmering on the soundtrack for nothing.  The theme of Christian martyrdom works splendidly in “Donnie Darko”, whether the airplane engine is real or merely a metaphorical projection of Donnie’s ego.

Since I’ve already mentioned a few of the film’s analogues, I’ll throw in one last important one, “Heathers”. “Donnie Darko” is peppered with incendiary social satire in the “Heathers” vein, gleefully skewering a world not exclusively, but largely peopled by adults who either have no clue how to help their troubled children or are full of really, really bad ideas about how to eradicate their kids’ problems. (“Mrs. Darko, I’m really starting to question your commitment to Sparkle Motion!” is a line that will go down in the annals of peerless satire right alongside “I love my dead gay son.”) More specifically both films feature a character hovering in the background, practically an extra, who serves as the moral anchor of the story.  In “Heathers” it was Martha Dumptruck, the obese outcast, and the one genuine moment of real heart in that movie is the ending in which Veronica leaves the school with Martha in tow, the two on the way to a genuine friendship (that scene is also the movie’s one misstep, but that’s another story).

Here the Martha character is an overweight Asian girl, Chen, who is also a target of scorn, and to whom Donnie is sympathetic. The key is empathic love, a kind of fellowship we might find in Christ’s teachings. When Donnie wants to kiss Gretchen for the first time, she stops him, telling him that she wants to wait for a moment when life is at its most wonderful. That moment comes when Donnie runs out of class to console Gretchen, who has been viciously insulted by the class bullies. She recognizes Donnie’s empathy and his love, and surprises him with that first, passionate kiss. That scene is echoed later when Donnie asks his mother, “How does it feel to have a wacko for a son?” “Wonderful” she replies affectionately, fighting tears. Both Gretchen and Donnie’s mother seem to intuit that empathy and love are the proper responses to life’s hardship, and their characters are brought together at the end of the film in a moment of pure and revitalizing fellow-feeling.  That Donnie is perhaps intended to be a positive model of this love shows up plainly when we see that Chen has written Donnie’s name on her book cover.  He then sports her ear muffs, almost as if championing the meek. The film acknowledges that there are a hell of a lot of problems in life, but one possible solution, or amelioration, is simple kindness.

Because Donnie’s empathy is heightened by his newfound belief that he is part of a divine plan, he learns that he is loved and, more importantly perhaps, he learns that he loves his parents and friends with all his heart. In a real sense, he conquers the loneliness that haunts him early in the film.  Bravely, the movie gives Donnie that higher understanding without sparing him his fate. This, incidentally, is exactly the sort of bravery whose absence is felt so disturbingly in “Mulholland Drive”. And it gives “Donnie Darko” a deeper spiritual dimension that is almost impossible to find in contemporary movies, books, TV, music— pretty much anywhere you care to search. Yet the movie’s saving grace is its refusal to parade its more serious themes. In keeping the movie small, Kelly avoids the most common mistake: preachiness, in either its strident or schmaltzy permutations. There’s a great lesson here: combine big themes with small, artfully made movies and you get a miracle like “Donnie Darko”; take big themes and jam them into bigger films with a glaring spotlight on them and you get a vulgar excretion like “Pay It Forward”.

Like Shakespeare’s problem plays, “Donnie Darko”‘s one major drawback is that, because of its mixed-bag quality, it wins admiration more readily than love. This ambitious film is equal parts horror movie, pyschodrama, love story, and social satire; veering from one to the other never quite ruins the movie’s spellbinding pacing, but in the end there’s a small but niggling incoherence. The essence of “Donnie Darko” is subtlety and intelligence, and the somber and beautiful thread running through the movie isn’t well served by frequent detours into satiric caricature and pulse-pounding frights. This is Kelly’s first film, so I would venture to say that the problem is one of inexperience. Too often he seems to fall back on modes of cinematic storytelling he finds comfortable. That’s a little disappointing, but for a first-time director easily forgivable.