S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale

** - The girl who played the foul-mouthed little sister in Richard Kelly’s excellent “Donnie Darko” is all grown up… and super hot! That is pretty much all I took away from this sadly misguided and unnecessary attempt to turn a rather intriguing intellectual property into what I assume was intended to be turned into a franchise. This movie added absolutely nothing to the original and was pretty much just a rehash of its ideas in a different setting. “Donnie Darko” auteur Richard Kelly had nothing to do with this dull, ham-fisted, confusing and unforgivably lame direct-to-video clunker. The original film has a fairly limited following of sci-fi nerds, and I can’t imagine them (including myself) not being alienated by such a subpar effort, in which all the neat time travel ideas brought over from “Donnie Darko” are turned into gimmicky slop. One of the few bright spots was the solid score and the inclusion of several excellent shoegaze-type songs from the mid-90s by bands such as The Catherine Wheel, Dead Can Dance and The Cocteau Twins. I don’t think I can recommend this movie even for fans of the genre or for fans of the original film.