Who drugged Gretchen during The Evil Dead?

Before we get started, let me just say that analyzing Donnie Darko is so 2007. Back in those days, which were within five years of my first viewing of the movie in 2003, I kind of obsessed over the movie and devoted some thought to each and every little nugget of it. It's not a very 2024 thing at all, as most of us have transitioned to thinking of Darko as a one-time favorite that we still love, but it occupies more of a place of nostalgia for our younger years as cinephiles who were hungry to pore over a good head trip movie, not a current going consideration.

But I watched Donnie Darko for the first time in four years over the weekend, and that 2020 viewing was also four years after my previous viewing (which was six years after the one before that). That tracks with my discovery that we -- or at least I -- tend to watch favorite movies about as often as there are Olympics or presidential elections, the most-cited example on this blog being my favorite movie of all time, Raising Arizona.

It might have been a few more years for Darko except that I also just listened to the two episodes of The Next Picture Show -- the podcast devoted to comparing a new release to a classic film that may have helped inspire it -- that dealt with Darko and I Saw the TV Glow. Now that I finally saw Glow at MIFF, I've gone back and listened to the discussion of it on three different podcasts, which I avoided at the time they were released. (And I'm glad I waited, since one of my podcasters hated this movie, and I don't know how I would have avoided having his complaints in my head when I watched it.)

On this particular podcast they liked it, with some reservations, and the whole episode devoted to Darko got the juices flowing for a rewatch. Even if that movie is more nostalgic for me than it is currently breaking my 50-year-old brain, I still love a good rewatch merely for the purposes of nostalgia.

And I did think it was worth diving into one part of the movie that had always troubled me a little bit, but I've never written about it. (Spoilers, I guess.)

In the scene where Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal), under a trance, decides to burn down the house of self-help guru Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze), ultimately revealing his kiddie porn dungeon to the firefighters sifting through the ashes, he's seeing a revival of Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead at the town movie theater. (The Last Temptation of Christ is also playing here, as the marquee shows us, but that would be a whole different avenue of thematic investigation.)

His girlfriend Gretchen (Jena Malone) is accompanying him, but I can't imagine she's very enthusiastic about it because she falls asleep practically during the opening credits. It's at this point that the man in the rabbit costume, Frank (James Duval), sits next to her, and he and Donnie speak to each other across her blissfully sleeping body.

Even though I've seen this movie about seven times -- I could tell you exactly, except I didn't start recording the dates of rewatches until 2006 -- I always kind of think of this as a midnight movie they attend, hence explaining that Gretchen falls asleep almost immediately. They are the only two in the theater, which also suggests that it is playing at a strange time of night. (Though maybe a midnight movie would actually attract more excited cinephiles than an 8 p.m. showing.)

Except of course it's not a midnight movie, because during this scene, director Richard Kelly cross-cuts with an event going on at the same time -- Talent Show '88, as the banner reads, which is taking place at Donnie's school and includes a performance by Donnie's sister Samantha (Daveigh Chase) and her iconic dance troupe Sparkle Motion. The rest of Donnie's family is in attendance for this, as is Cunningham, conveniently sparing him a death by flame back at his house. (Donnie's a bit of a confused kid, but he wouldn't have lit the house on fire if there were anybody in it.)

But you get the sense Donnie would only do this if he were sure he had an alibi and his tracks would be covered. If you are at the movies with your girlfriend, you have that alibi -- but in order for her not to know you disappeared for 45 minutes or more, she has to not be conscious to bear witness.

Even as deranged -- that's too harsh a word -- as Donnie is, he wouldn't assume Gretchen would sleep for the whole movie. In fact, he wouldn't assume she would sleep at all during a primetime movie that's taking place at the same time as a family-friendly high school talent show. If she did fall asleep, it might be for five minutes, and she would at least stir a few times, even if she did ultimately resume her slumber.

You might propose the theory that Gretchen did stir, and when she saw Donnie wasn't there, she assumed he was in the bathroom and nodded off again. However, she's also alone in a movie theater with a scary movie playing, so this would work for one momentary awakening maximum. If she awoke two or three more times, and Donnie still wasn't there, she'd start to freak out, especially since she's living in fear of a crazy stepfather who is on the loose after stabbing her mother.

So the only way any of this works is if Gretchen is drugged. 

But who drugged her? Donnie? We know he takes medication, but the meds are meant to even him out, not put him to sleep. And there's nothing else to suggest Donnie is this kind of kid. Not only do we not have any reason to think he has access to these sorts of drugs, but he's fiercely protective of the people he loves. And he may just love Gretchen. 

Plus, it doesn't seem as though this was premeditated. Frank appears to him in the theater and suggests that Donnie "Burn it to the ground." And though we know, or at least think, Frank is a projection of Donnie's overactive imagination, meaning it's something he was thinking about already, he certainly seems surprised enough to have Frank appear there next to him, at this particular moment.

So is it Frank who drugged her?

As far as we know, Frank is not seen by anyone nor can he interact with anyone other than Donnie. There is clearly something "real" about Frank in that this ends up being a real person that Donnie hasn't met yet, but at this point he is imaginary, and you can't drug someone with imaginary drugs.

The notion then is that something about this scenario causes Gretchen to become entranced, something mystical that we can't explain. There are, of course, a lot of mystical things in Donnie Darko that defy explanation, but outside of the stuff directly related to the portals and time travel, there is a real-world basis for all the film's other events. For example, Donnie ends up in strange places around his town at night, but there's a terrestrial explanation for how he got there -- he slept-walked. Or at least, walked there in a trance of his own mental creation. 

There ultimately isn't likely an explanation for this, and there needn't be. Gretchen's 85-minute nap -- that's the length of The Evil Dead -- is probably more a screenwriting convenience than anything with a deeper meaning.

But one of the reasons we have favorite films is that we like to ask these questions and imagine what the answers might be. 

MIFF: I saw the IMAX screen glow, and sparkler cake double feature

There were a couple of firsts in my first two MIFF movies of 2024, other than obviously being the first of the year:

1) The first time I had ever gone into the city on a weekday to see MIFF movies, rather than working in the city and then staying for my movies;

2) The first time I had ever seen a MIFF movie on an IMAX screen.

That second isn't so surprising, given that I don't believe MIFF has ever had a partnership, before this year, with the Melbourne Museum, where one of the world's largest IMAX screens is housed. 

And because all my past IMAX experiences have involved $200 million blockbusters, that makes I Saw the TV Glow definitely the lowest budgeted film I've ever seen on an IMAX screen.

Jane Schoenbrun's film was actually the second I watched on Friday, so let's start at the beginning.

Which was that morning, when I toured the campus of a high school where my son might want to transfer. That was the reason I couldn't go into work on Friday, though I'd already worked three days in the office this week while backfilling for my manager, so I can't say I minded. He wouldn't be transferring there until the start of 2026, but I kind of hope he never does as it is really too expensive for us, and I wasn't all that impressed by the facilities. (And I promise that was not just my wallet talking.)

So when the workday did come to a close, blissfully ending two weeks in which I was doing two different jobs, I took the train in to the city in time for my 6 p.m. showing of La Cocina at my favorite MIFF venue, The Capitol. 

The 139-minute black and white film by director Alonzo Ruizpalacios was welcome in at least one regard. In my previous post, I bemoaned the fact that none of the first four films I'd picked for MIFF 2024 was a foreign film. Set in New York City, La Cocina certainly isn't "foreign" in that sense, but I'd say that more than half the dialogue is in Spanish, so that's something at least. 

In most other regards, this movie did not work for me. It reminded me of a mode of independent film we haven't seen much of in the past 20 years, the one that invites the word "pretentious" with a capital P. Not only is there the black and white photography, but there are a lot of off-center shots and dialogue that is ten to 20 percent more poetic than it should be. Plus everybody is smoking in nearly ever scene, though I suppose it's possible this film is set in the past. (It isn't specified, and the production design is timeless enough that you wouldn't know for sure, though it does appear to be at a time where touch-screen point-of-sales might be relatively new technology, since we see characters perplexed by trying to work them.)

It follows a day in the kitchen and front of house of what appears to be a touristy restaurant in Times Square, a bit in an upstairs-downstairs mode, though mostly downstairs. A manager is conducting a series of interviews with staff because more than $800 went missing from the till. It's one of those movies where so much happens in a single day that it beggars belief, from a broken water main that floods the kitchen, to a beef between two workers escalating into violence, to a new starter being shown the ropes, to a particular hothead exhausting all three of the strikes the chef gives him in one day. Its origins as a play are pretty obvious, and somehow in among all this, the characters seem to have more time when they are on a break than anything else.

I had been hopeful about the movie because Rooney Mara is the one recognizable star, but I guess Mara isn't quite the guarantee of quality she once was for me. I guess that's not quite saying it right. This movie is "quality" in the sense that it is made with a high level of technical competence and has good artistic instincts, even if they are the instincts of a slightly different era. The conception and execution are both heavy-handed to the point of rolling the eyeballs, though. Since the action is restricted to the restaurant, La Cocina reminds me a bit of how those who didn't like Birdman must have felt about it.

Incidentally, now that I have seen La Cocina, my 2024 movie list contains both movies called La Cocina and The Kitchen. 

After La Cocina, I picked up some not-very-good Asian fast food and meandered my way over to the Melbourne Museum, a walk of about 20 minutes. I arrived with ten minutes to spare, which I quickly discovered was the wrong tack when you're talking about an IMAX screen.

I sit closer to the screen than your average person, subscribing to the notion that a movie screen should fill as much of your field of vision as possible. Forced to sit in the fourth row, I think it was, of an IMAX screen is taking that a bit to an extreme. So while this was a good sort of movie to be overwhelmed by, I would have preferred to be overwhelmed from about two rows back from where I was.

I had purposely prevented myself from learning too much about I Saw the TV Glow before coming in, even going so far as to avoid its discussion entirely on two of my regular podcasts. So I didn't know it was a Buffy-like TV show the characters were obsessed with. I was expecting something more inherently supernatural in nature like the central conceit of Schoenbrun's We're All Going to the World's Fair. 

Although this is a better movie than that, my core assessment of the film's strengths and weaknesses is very similar. Both movies have some excellent visual moments that chill you to the bone, and the overall mood is hard to beat. And both movies come in at only a percentage as successful as I thought they could have been, in part because both fail to stick the ending -- or even really have much of an ending to speak of.

But rest assured, I do feel quite positively about I Saw the TV Glow. Because of how it fizzles out -- pretty much the entire final 10 to 15 minutes didn't work for me -- I can't give it any higher than a 3.5 out of 5, though interestingly, I've slotted it in higher on my year-end rankings in progress than some films I've given a four. I Saw the TV Glow is better than those films in most ways, though still leaves me fundamentally unsatisfied in a manner that prevents me from going to four stars. A film that is a better version of itself than I Saw the TV Glow might get four stars, and still not be the film that I Saw the TV Glow is.

I did appreciate a lot of the thoughts by Schoenbrun, who I believe considers themselves a trans woman with they/them pronouns, on gender fluidity. Much of the movie operates as a metaphor for feeling trapped inside a body that doesn't feel like yours, and not being understood by anybody so seeking to dream yourself away into the popular culture that becomes more of a family to you than your own. And some of those images -- man, I won't soon forget them. Those strange dancing twins whose hair and chin gives them the appearance of crescent moons, and the moon monster himself, Mr. Melancholy, lasciviously licking the face of one of the characters in one of the film's haunting signature images ... I'll rewatch I Saw the TV Glow for them alone.

I promised you a sparkler cake double feature. And true enough, both of these films contains a scene where somebody carries out a birthday cake with a sparkler on top of it, and all the restaurant workers gather to sing happy birthday to a customer. Doesn't get a lot more specific than that.

As I write this I have already attended my second MIFF double feature on Saturday night, but it's too much to cover in this one post so I'll get to it as soon as I can.

We're all talking in complete sentences

Horror director Jane Schoenbrun is well acquainted with subjects, predicates and objects.

Two years after her squirmy little horror movie We're All Going to the World's Fair, Schoenbrun has been given some name actors to work with, including star of Jurassic World and Pokemon movies Justice Smith, in I Saw the TV Glow.

Realizing I had heard her name before and seeing that this also involved looking at screens, I didn't take long after hearing about I Saw the TV Glow to conclude it was from the same person who made We're All Going to the World's Fair. 

But really, it was the similar structures of the titles that clinched it.

No real comment here, except that we do tend to notice when movie titles are a grammatically complete thought. It's a somewhat irregular occurrence. I don't have a way to test this against the titles I've seen that wouldn't take forever, and if I look only at movies starting with "I," I'll get a sort of reverse confirmation bias because most of those will in fact probably be sentences. (Quick glance: The only ones that aren't are those that start with I and a comma -- such as I, Tonya -- and one other that just doesn't really mean anything: I Origins.)

This is a pretty flimsy premise for a post because Schoenbrun has one other feature as a director, when she was Dan instead of Jane: 2018's A Self-Induced Hallucination. So that breaks that particular titling convention.

But this is Jane Schoenbrun, and Jane, in two features, has been consistent in her approach.

The movie doesn't open until a couple months from now, but the advanced buzz seems to be good. And consider me unusually primed both after World's Fair (which was quite chilling until it petered out into a limp ending) and Skinamarink (which, as I have discussed ad nauseum, was the first horror movie to top my chart last year).