The worst thing about DONNIE DARKO is the plot. Unfortunately, plotting is what the director's cut is all about.
In its original form, DONNIE DARKO is so impenetrable that it inspires its audiences to think of it almost as a tone poem while they try to piece together the clues scattered throughout its narrative. This worked for me, as I drew more from the film's evocation of adolescence than I did its confusing storyline.
The director's cut, on the other hand, adds a few scenes and some intertitles that take this strange meditation on puberty and turns it into a rather humdrum science fiction piece about time travel. The intertitles have an added, unpleasant effect: by demonstrating that Donnie is not psychotic, they eliminate the sole source of the original version's dramatic tension.
Directors commonly moan when studio "suits" come in and demand changes to their vision. In this case, the suits were right.
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