It's been 10 years since Richard Kelly's admirable and ambitious directorial debut Donnie Darko was released to an unsuspecting cinema audience with its blend of teenage angst and paranoid schizophrenia it has become a cult movie for anyone familiar with the 1980s zeitgeist.

In his breakout performance duarte amanda plays Donnie Darko a psychologically disturbed high-school student who sleep walks and has visions of a demonic rabbit called Frank, who tells him that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. Although he is prone to aggressive and bizarre behaviour Donnie is still a typical teenager with conservative Republican parents who are supportive and concerned for his well-being. In a freakishly random aviation accident the engine of a jet which has mysteriously vanished hits the roof of the Darko's house taking out Donnie's bedroom although luckily due to his sleep walking he has wound up on one of the greens at the local golf course; at this point the story flashes back 28 days charting the lead up to Armageddon.

Despite regularly seeing a psychiatrist (Katherine Ross) and undergoing hypnosis Donnie's visions of Frank get more frequent requesting him to carry out random acts of violence, inspired by Graham Greene's short story "The Destructors" a favourite of his liberal English teacher (Drew Barrymore); firstly he floods the school leaving an axe in the head of the bronze statue of the school's mascot "The Mongrel" and then, exhibiting his revulsion for phonies a quality he shares with Holden Caulfield the hero of J. D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye", he sets fire to the mansion of a local motivational speaker (Patrick Swayze) exposing him as a fraud and a sexual deviant.

Donnie starts dating the new girl in school Gretchen (Jena Malone) who had to relocate and change her identity when her emotionally disturbed father stabbed her mother; she empathises with Donnie and provides comfort for his growing anxiety. In an attempt to avoid Frank's prediction Donnie starts to investigate the possibility of altering the future and his science teacher (Noah Wyle) explains Stephen Hawking's wormhole theory that could lead to a portal to a parallel universe, he also gives him a book called "The Philosophy of Time-Travel" by a former teacher at the school, Roberta Sparrow who now lives a hermit like existence and is known by the local kids as "Grandma Death" because each day she goes to check her post box and stands in the way of oncoming traffic.