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So I finally got to see this earlier today. A few points that nobody's made yet and a few replies:
Edward Darko, in the hotel room, mentions "Frank Feedler, from high school. He died on his way to the prom." Frank, of course, dies on his way back to the party.
Frank is mentioned by Elisabeth - she's walking round the house during the party and asks a couple of people if they've seen him.
Donnie's bicycle journey back home at the very beginning of the film mirrors his return to the Primary Universe. I'm not sure, but the spot where he's fallen of the bike (from his last sleepwalking experience before bunnyFrank interferes) might be the same place he takes Gretchen's corpse to watch the beginnings of the collapse of the Tangent Universe.
The first Gretchen/Donnie conversation takes place outside Jim Cunningham's house. The superhero comment hints towards Donnie's later actions causing Cunningham's arrest, an unknown vigilante.
Thee's a plush rabbit toy behind Donnie the first time he sees the space/time spears.
The second Evil Dead film ends with Ash getting sucked backwards in time through a portal.
A couple more ET references are the guy in the biohazard suit coming out of the Darkos' front door and the Hallowe'en lanterns on house porches at night.
"Hungry, Hungry Hippos" was the funniest line in the film.
There's something (a pumpkin? Certainly doesn't look like one) on the kitchen top between Donnie and Elisabeth in the scene where she tells him that she's been accepted to Harvard that's the spitting image of bunnyFrank's face.
Donnie clutches his gut in pain just before he gets into the station wagon with the dead Gretchen - is this the point where he's purposefully pulled himself away from his space/time channel and exercised - and proved the existence of - free will?
There are two points where the camera spins around Donnie: the one that Cherry's mentioned at the party and one before that when he first gets off the school bus. We come back to the school bus later, of course, seeing it as the final image in the reverse film section before the screen whites-out. I can think of a couple of reasons for this, the most obvious being that it forms a couple of bookends to periods of time in the film. The other is that the side view makes Donnie's emergence from the bus door look a little like someone stepping out of a coffin, but that could just be me.
Immediately after that reverse sequence, though, there's something that's out of place. We're presented with a couple of seconds of what looks like a family reunion scene, Elisabeth hugging Samantha and Edward embracing Rose, while Donnie looks on. What is this? What's its position in time or space? It almost looks like the safe return of Rose and Samantha from the talent competition they travelled to, but there are obvious problems with that idea.
Oh yeah, someone said something earlier in the thread about Monnitoff's name being written into the dirt of the school bus window. It's not; it's "Mongrels".
The stag heads in Cunningham's apartment are referenced later on in the painting in Kittie's bedroom, seen when we return to the Primary Universe.
Frank hasn't drawn the images of bunnyFrank immediately on the return to the Primary Universe. A couple of people seem to have got this a bit confused. He's already made the mask; these are design sketches done some time before any of the events in the film. The only reason we're shown them is to remind us who the guy is. He may have had some glimpse into the future/Tangent future, but, if so, that's happened out of the confines of the film.
The notes in The Philosophy of Time Travel don't have to have been written by Sparrow. Think about it. On returning to the Primary Universe the book is back in Monnitoff's possession. Those who've woken have some residual memory of the Tangent Universe. Personally, I think it's more likely that they're down to him (although this issue is very much incidental to the plot of the film in itself).
Notorious? Take a look at the lyrics. They relate quite well to Cunningham. Also, the dance that Sparkle Motion perform is overtly sexual. The exposure of Cunningham as a paedophile is necessary for plot reasons more than anything else; there needs to be something there that forces him to leave the scene to provide a basis to a number of plot strands, and it also reinforces the 'Donnie as superhero' side of things.
To whoever was playing I-Spy... Animals!: there are the aforementioned hippos and stags, as well as Samantha's unicorn toy (Ariel) and Donnie grabbing the toy dog in the psychiatrist's office (linking back to the pet dog that crawled under the porch to die).
The film? Loved it. Some fantastic stuff in these threads, too (I especially like Tann's bullet/eye/portal theory). |
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