25 Years Ago, Jake Gyllenhaal Broke Out In This Low-Budget Sci-Fi Cult Classic Movie

If you're a Millennial, it's pretty damning to learn that Richard Kelly's sci-fi cult-classic and feature debut, "Donnie Darko," has turned 25 this year. Have we really been watching Jake Gyllenhaal for more than two and a half decades now while he still doesn't look a day older than 32? For better or worse, the answer is yes. But that's not so much the case with Kelly, who gave Gyllenhaal one of his most memorable roles and then, eight years and two unsuccessful movies later, he completely disappeared from the filmmaking scene. After watching his other features — "The Box" and "Southland Tales" — you get a vague feeling that "Donnie Darko" might've been a fluke, made and released at the right place, at the right time. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure those other two flicks have their fans, too, but none compares to that rich atmosphere Kelly managed to concoct in his debut.

"Donnie Darko" is almost entirely made up of vibes. Vibes that are often harder to nail than delivering a sensible plot. Kelly falters at the latter, but rarely the former. His script isn't an easy one to follow or make sense of, but the immersive backdrop he paints around it is top-tier. "Donnie Darko," unsurprisingly, follows Donnie Darko (Gyllenhaal), a high-school kid in the American suburbia of 1988, who begins to have daylight hallucinations that are symptomatic of paranoid schizophrenia. In these visions, he encounters a monster-like humanoid rabbit named Frank, who tells him the world will end in 28 days. That's after he saves Donnie's life by making him follow his voice one night during sleepwalking, while a jet engine mysteriously crashes into his bedroom with no explanation. And things only get wilder from there.

To this day, I couldn't really tell you what "Donnie Darko" is about or what message it wants to convey. It's one of those films you rather feel than thoroughly comprehend, and with each rewatch you discover something new in it — a connection, a hidden truth, or yet another ambivalence about its characters — that you haven't before. That's what makes it so fascinating but also annoyingly hard to crack, and I still can't say whether that's by design or if Kelly's brain is wired completely backward compared to the rest of us.

Still, it's not just the intricate plot structure and peculiar milieu that makes "Donnie Darko" endlessly rewatchable, but its stacked cast, too. I'm unsure whether the writer-director had some real connections in Hollywood prior or if the stars were just aligned when his debut got cast, but getting Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, and Patrick Swayze (for a rather atypical role) for such a dark and unconventional indie flick seems like a magic trick in retrospect. Granted, some of those actors weren't nearly as famous and accomplished as we know them to be today, but still.

Obviously, Gyllenhaal benefited the most from playing the lead here with a blend of charisma, weirdness, and introversion that he shaped to perfection throughout his career (even if people tend to forget he came off playing his first lead role in "October Sky" just two years prior). Undoubtedly, he's the star of "Donnie Darko," shining the brightest, but I couldn't name any other actor who doesn't do a fantastic job with what they're given here. Whether you love or hate Kelly's film for what it is, it's hard to argue that the performances in it are sublime.

Critics may've found Kelly's feature debut daring and unique (including the late Roger Ebert), showering it with praise, but moviegoers didn't really know how to feel about it when it came out. It was still somewhat of a success at the box office, given its experimental nature and low $6 million budget, grossing $ 7.5 million worldwide.

In retrospect, however, it's pretty clear that "Donnie Darko" found its intended audience after it was released on video. As much as I can remember, it was a word-of-mouth sensation among teenagers more than anything. If you were into weird and mind-bending movies of all sorts, it just found its way to you sooner or later. That monster rabbit mask and costume quickly became iconic and instantly associated with the film.

All in all, Kelly's feature debut has certainly earned its place among the all-time cult classics, and Gyllenhaal will forever be indebted to it for making his career shape up the way it did (and not regretting starring in it as he did with 2010's "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time").