Richard Kelly
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Under the Silver Lake (2018)
Directed by David Robert Mitchell
influenced by Southland Tales (2007), Donnie Darko (2001), The Box (2009)
Visuals Themes
But in terms of awkward career progressions, it seems inevitable that the lurch from It Follows to this swollen dramatic sprawl will draw comparison to Richard Kelly's banana-peel slip from the mesmerizing genre-bending of Donnie Darko to the overreaching mess of Southland Tales, which also premiered in competition at Cannes.
It’s very reminiscent of what happened to director Richard Kelly when he followed cult favourite Donnie Darko (2001) with the ambitious but convoluted Southland Tales (2006) and singlehandedly ended his promising career.
Mitchell’s work here could be most easily compared to that of gonzo auteur Richard Kelly, the man behind Donnie Darko (which I can’t stand), Southland Tales (which I find crazy in all the right ways), and The Box (which I have no opinion of).
Writer-director-producer David Robert Mitchell, who revolutionized the modern horror genre with his 2014 feature It Follows, was ambitious to the point of rashness with his neo-noir mystery Under the Silver Lake, which glimmers with nods to many noirs past: the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice — plus Vertigo… and Rear Window… and Richard Kelly’s post-Donnie Darko incoherent slog of a feature Southland Tales.
In the interim, Mitchell’s trippy, self-reflexive hipster “Vertigo” has become one of the most intensely debated and hyper-analyzed films among young cinephiles since “Donnie Darko.”
It’s an homage to the side of David Lynch that works better in theory than it does as flesh-and-blood cinema, and it may also remind you, at times, of “Southland Tales,” the three-hour pile of pretension that Richard Kelly made after “Donnie Darko.”
While the film flirts with ideas of mental illness, religious possession and ancient supernatural forces – and, in doing so, wears myriad influences from The Exorcist and Jacob's Ladder to Donnie Darko and Fight Club prominently on its sleeve – none are explored in any depth beyond their ability to produce a scare.
Based on a novel by Brian DeLeeuw -- who co-wrote the screenplay with director Adam Egypt Mortimer -- Daniel Isn't Real lightly travels familiar territory, with shades of Fight Club , Donnie Darko , and American Psycho.
The film is based on a 2009 novel by Brian DeLeeuw, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Adam Egypt Mortimer, but one could make a list of all the films that have clearly influenced it, ranging from obvious titles like "Donnie Darko" and "Fight Club" to the justifiably obscure "Drop Dead Fred."
Some part of this movie wants to be a strangely mysterious coming-of-age tale, akin to Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko .
In the middle-ish of the scale, you’ve got your Black Swans and your Donnie Darkos, where the line between a character’s mental health and supernatural shenanigans is fuzzier.
The last time a film was this able to collapse the passage of time and make a viewer feel deeply as if still in the manic-but-giddy uncertainties of youth was Donnie Darko.
Upstream Color (2013)
Directed by Shane Carruth
influenced by Donnie Darko (2001), Southland Tales (2007)
Themes
(Another likely influence or parallel would be Richard Kelly, he of “Donnie Darko” and “Southland Tales.” ) You could read the film as the story of life on planet Earth, with some vague degree of mysticism but no default to spiritual or supernatural beginnings, or you could say (despite my claim earlier that human society is nearly invisible) that it’s a parable about life in a downward-trending economy.
For every viewer who fell in love with the wilfully mind-boggling Donnie Darko or The Fountain , there's another who gave up long before the end credits and posted an angry IMDb diatribe about their ordeal.
Maybe we’ll see the release of a Donnie Darko -style 'Director’s Cut’ down the track, purporting to filling in some of the gaps.
(Another likely influence or parallel would be Richard Kelly, he of “Donnie Darko” and “Southland Tales.” ) You could read the film as the story of life on planet Earth, with some vague degree of mysticism but no default to spiritual or supernatural beginnings, or you could say (despite my claim earlier that human society is nearly invisible) that it’s a parable about life in a downward-trending economy.
What separates it from other “high school outcasts in a ‘throwback’ setting” narratives (including Donnie Darko, which it’s now frequently been compared to) is the trans nature of it.
The fusion of star-studded satire, science-fiction, and apocalyptic doom begins to recall Richard Kelly’s recently reclaimed Bush-era cult classic Southland Tales , yet the difference between the two feels instructive.
Granted, it’s better than the self-satisfied Vice by a huge margin, but it still doesn’t excuse the sanded-down Southland Tales we’ve been given here.
Super Dark Times (2017)
Directed by Kevin Phillips
influenced by Donnie Darko (2001)
Themes Visuals Plot
Comparisons to Stand By Me and Donnie Darko have already been made, but the film in which Super Dark Times footsteps seems to be following is It Follows.
The events of the film take place amid creepy watercolor backdrops reminiscent of that other perfect suburban mood piece , Donnie Darko, as well as in homes with old, tacky furniture and around space heaters in ugly garages.
Here they reunite with cinematographer Eli Born and editor Ed Yonaitis for a story which consciously echoes the likes of River's Edge and Stand by Me in terms of plot, while also displaying thematic and stylistic debts to Donnie Darko and the small-town pictures of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg.
A slow-burn high school thriller that’s like a tortured cross between “Stand By Me” and “Donnie Darko” (with a bit of Dostoyevskian madness thrown in there for good measure, Phillips’ feature-length debut begins by welcoming us to a grey Hudson Valley town that’s lost in the barren phantom zone between fall and winter.
It’s an authentic, honest and emotional experience that could be this generation’s Mean Creek or Donnie Darko .
The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Directed by Lana Wachowski
influenced by Southland Tales (2007)
Visuals
There are lots of moments that recall Satoshi Kon’s filmography, Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales” and the Wachowskis’ Netflix series “Sense8” to create this unstable world that is unnerving yet wholly intriguing.
He even breaks the fourth wall to rips off “The Big Lebowski” with embarrassing results, providing a musical number that’s almost scene for scene similar to the aforementioned, with none of the charm of whimsy.
Thatâ??s just a brief sketch of the plot: Southland Tales is a veritable encyclopaedia of weird, self-consciously referencing the mannered filmic worlds of Kiss Me Deadly, The Manchurian Candidate, Repo Man, Jacob's Ladder, The Big Lebowski, Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr. and Primer, as well as Philip K. Dick's oeuvre of mind-expansion and paranoia along with some of the stranger passages from the Book of Revelations.
Kelly opens his mouth wide to reveal his undigested references: Aside from his in-syndication cast and his soundtrack choices (a score by Moby, with crossover hits from Blur and the Pixies), he blurts out name-drops to Elton John, Philip K. Dick, Kiss Me Deadly and The Big Lebowski.
Thatâ??s just a brief sketch of the plot: Southland Tales is a veritable encyclopaedia of weird, self-consciously referencing the mannered filmic worlds of Kiss Me Deadly, The Manchurian Candidate, Repo Man, Jacob's Ladder, The Big Lebowski, Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr. and Primer, as well as Philip K. Dick's oeuvre of mind-expansion and paranoia along with some of the stranger passages from the Book of Revelations.
Where You've Seen the Woman at the End Who Sings the National Anthem: That's Rebekah Del Rio, the woman who sang "Crying" in Spanish in Mulholland Drive, this movie's smarter parent.
If this ends up closer to Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back than to Mulholland Dr. (or even to Skidoo), it still has the galvanic pulse of a filmmaker trying things out, failing, and trying again.
Far from the next Mulholland Drive that J. Hoberman proclaimed it from Cannes, Southland Tales is genuinely poor.
Beau Is Afraid (2023)
Directed by Ari Aster
influenced by Southland Tales (2007), Donnie Darko (2001)
Themes Visuals
While Beau is in no way a “career killer,” as some have assumed, it carries the same devil-may-care, “this one is for me” repudiation of conventional taste that eventually made Richard Kelley’s Southland Tales and David Rober Mitchell’s Under the Silver the Lake beloved cult artifacts.
These highly distinctive, one might even say pretentious, epics seem like something every horror auteur needs to get out of their system, with it cut from the same cloth as Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales and David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake .
Beau is Afraid , c’est la version réussie de Southland Tales et Under the Silver Lake , deux oeuvres vaines et prétentieuses, sans queue ni tête, que le public avait maudites.
Richard Kelly avait enthousiasmé la sphère indépendante avec son Donnie Darko avant de se perdre avec Southland Tales .
Aside from Foster's determined portrayal, and one excellent exchange about Jake Gyllenhaal and "Donnie Darko," the film's entertainment value barely compares to Lance Armstrong's actual career.
It shares with David Lynch's Eraserhead a stubbornly-what-it-is unhipness that ensures inadvertent, and possibly perennial, hipness.
With the end of the decade (or, perhaps, upon the release of David Lynch’s Eraserhead , the most durable Head film) came the subgenre’s disintegration.
The movie was made on the kind of low budget typically associated with independent films, yet the visual effects are first-rate (one in particular looks like it was lifted out of James Cameron's The Abyss ).
He tells his psychiatrist (played by Katharine Ross of "The Stepford Wives") about his strange visions, and she prescribes more drugs.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015)
Directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon
influenced by Donnie Darko (2001)
Visuals
His meticulous compositions have drawn many comparisons to Wes Anderson, but Me and Earl 's kinetic filming of perfunctory, high-school hustle and bustle evokes Richard Kelly's work on Donnie Darko (another Sundance favorite, many moons ago), while lacking that film’s supernatural edge.
Its power soundtrack verifies Richard Kelly’s Hughes-ian aesthetic, and his stuttering steadicam shots are lifted from Martin Scorsese—one of the final shots in the film, even, is noticeably similar to the final shot of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blue .
Kaboom lives somewhere between that surrealist classic and Donnie Darko .
For his latest effort, the Skittles-colored "Kaboom," Araki not only reverts back to his old ways, but goes one notch lower with the kind of snarky, disingenuous filmmaking an amateur might create who's seen 2001's " Donnie Darko " far too many times.
It has similarities to Richard Kelly's great “Donnie Darko” (with which it shares a few plot elements) and his significantly less great “Southland Tales,” but Araki keeps his ambitions more modest.
It isn’t exactly irrelevant that the world is ending, a headless corpse has been discovered in a dumpster and Smith is being stalked by men in animal masks (a bit of an in-joke alongside Araki regular James Duval, who also played Frank, the six-foot rabbit in Donnie Darko (2001), another teen-centred movie with an apocalyptic bent).
The challenge of “Kaboom” will be to hold together even when it feels like some crazy mutation of “Donnie Darko,” “Juno” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.”
Throw in occasionally striking pop art visuals, an animal-mask sporting cult and apocalyptic conspiracy theories and the ingredients are in place for a hipster Donnie Darko.
Its temporally spiraling plot is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book transferred to the screen, influenced by music videos and tempered with a fatalistic sense of humor that makes twisted reference to other beloved Xer relics of the 80s: Donnie’s impassioned, intellectual diatribe about Smurf reproductive habits brings to mind Stand by Me’s Superman–versus–Mighty Mouse debate; Donnie and his friends racing their bikes through the dark streets of Middlesex on the night of pre-Halloween partying is nothing so much as an allusion to E.T…. and to all the subtle creepiness of what is mostly remembered as a light fantasy.
Still, despite a run on Adult Swim, this is the first time “Death Note” will register on the radar of most Americans, and rather than comparing it to the Japanese source, they’ll most likely be reminded of Richard Kelly’s 2001 cult classic “Donnie Darko,” from which director Adam Wingard (“You’re Next”) has taken a page.
Like James Stewart's character in "Harvey" (1950), Donnie sees a rabbit that no one else can see or hear.