Donnie Darko was released in 2001, It was written and directed by Richard Kelly. This movie is a mixture of drama, psychological thriller and science fiction that blends certain time travel theory.
"The story takes place in 1988. Donnie Darko is an intelligent, socially awkward, and emotionally troubled teenager who sleepwalks, experiences visual hallucinations (possibly because of his paranoid schizophrenia for which he takes medication), and is in the medical care of a psychiatrist. One night, a jet engine from a commercial aircraft falls into Donnie's bedroom. He avoids death only because prior to the accident, he had obeyed a voice in his head that led him to sleepwalk outside of his room. The voice is that of Frank, an apparently imaginary friend in a man-sized rabbit costume. At midnight on October 2, Frank prophesies to Donnie that the end of the world will occur in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds." from wikipedia
"Donnie throughout the film begins seeing 'silvery plastic gel' spheres that flow out from people's chests. Such a sphere indicates where a person will travel in the near future. In one example, Donnie sees one sphere snake into the living room, on the rear end of which his younger sister follows. Another sphere leads Donnie to a pistol in his parents' closet, which he takes and keeps." from wikipedia
Frank (the figure in the bunny costume) is a key character in Donnie Darko though his presence is never fully explained nor is he identified as more than a hallucination that guides Donnie. Is he killed at one point? I'll let you decide. Nevertheless, Frank for reasons undefined tells Donnie to do certain things and Donnie, for whatever reason, does them. While doing these acts, Donnie experiences blackouts where he can't fully remember where he was or what he was doing. These acts provoke a certain chain of events in Donnie's timeline:
Donnie is instructed to flood his high school which leads him to Gretchen Ross.
Via Frank, Donnie pursues the question of time travel with his science teacher, who gives him the book The Philosophy of Time Travel by Roberta Sparrow, an old woman known as "Grandma Death" among the neighborhood youth.
Donnie burns down the house of a motivational speaker he ridiculed exposing the speaker's secret "kiddie porn dungeon." His mother ends up taking Donnie's younger sister and her dance group on a flight to Star Search in Los Angeles because of the speaker's arrest.
As events further unravel around Donnie, he spots a portal opening in the sky and drives to a hillside. As Donnie's mother and sister return home, one of the engines on the airplane detaches. The engine travels through the time portal to 28 days earlier and crashes into Donnie's bedroom.
At this moment the movie completes a time travel narrative convention know as the predestination paradox or causal loop or closed time loop. This is based on the idea of a fixed timeline where history cannot be changed. In a causal loop the time traveler is caught in a sequence of events that predestined their travel back in time. There is the possibility of the time traveler influencing the past while travelling, however one way to explain why history does not change (fixed timeline) is that whatever happened was meant to happen. A time traveler attempting to alter the past according to the principles of this causal loop, nevermind if intentional or not, is simply fulfilling his predetermined role in creating that history, not changing it. (Pickover, Time: A Traveler's Guide)
Another exceptional movie that explores this phenomena is Timecrimes or Los CronocrÃmenes, directed by Nacho Vigalondo in 2007. In this film, Hector (played by Karra Elejalde) is caught in a causal loop. At first a victim of a seemingly random attack, events unfold for Hector that raises the questions of what defines the victim and the murderer? This is an excellent film that further explores the possibility of free will's existence in a causal loop.
This second time around, Donnie chooses to stay in bed - sacrificing himself. But the question is why, for what and/or for whom?
Part of the confusion in this film is that it takes a nontraditional perspective on time travel. Within this one film is the idea of a natural timeline, the one Donnie would have lived if Frank had not suddenly manifested and directed him to do certain things. The events in this film, Donnie's decisions and acts create separate alternate timelines but the point of origin is Frank. However, Frank manifests and the film does not offer much explanation as to why? Perhaps Frank is an alter ego, a hallucination Donnie created in order for his mind to cope and comprehend his psychic ability to time travel much in the way split personalities can form out of traumatic experiences. Maybe Frank is another time traveler. Or maybe still Frank is the embodiment of destiny, the representation of the concept that we cannot escape our fate, that our path is determined and the timeline is fixed and we cannot change the sequence of events. If the latter is true, then did Donnie truly time travel or did he just experience a vision of an alternate timeline, one in which he saw certain events play out to their conclusion. Then, did he ever really have a choice? Wasn't he always going to to be killed by that jet engine?
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