DONNIE DARKO

      Donnie Darko is a movie based on the life of a trouble teenager named Donnie. 

Donnie is a very sensitive, bitter teenager whom in the beginning of the movie, quits taking a special medication. He is quite the outcast in his school.  Suddenly one day, Donnie experiences a traumatic accident when an airplane engine falls through his roof and nearly kills him. After that, Donnie experiences hallucinations of an evil bunny and random voices telling him to bad things to and around the neighborhood. The bunny and the voices eventually convince Donnie to even kill a man. The whole time Donnie is having these problems, he is seeing a therapist to seek help. The therapist hypnotizes him on every visit to tap into his unconsciousness and she gets a look into his disturbed thinking.

Donnie is suffering from schizophrenia. Donnie falls into the paranoid schizophrenia type and also the disorganized schizophrenia type. In the movie, Donnie is extremely argumentative to everyone around him and feels like everyone is out to get him in some way. After his accident, he becomes distant from his friends and family and starts having these disturbed thoughts and feelings. Eventually Donnie starts hallucinating about an evil bunny. This evil bunny supposedly tells him to bad things to his school and to some of the people around him. Donnie's schizophrenia could have easily been caused coming off his medication, his near death experience, or the stress of being an outcasted teen. According to our book, experiences and stressors could make people more vulnerable to schizophrenia, and Donnie falls under both of those circumstances.