Director's cuts are a tricky thing. In the right hands, they can be better than the original — just ask Ridley Scott. However, sometimes a director meddling with their old movies to make them match the original vision they had doesn't always add to the quality. Yes, we are looking at you George Lucas.
The director's cut for "Donnie Darko" isn't as cut-and-dry as these examples, though. This polarizing re-issue came out in 2004, just a few years after the original movie, when Richard Kelly revisited his earliest work before he even directed another film.
The upside to the director's cut of "Donnie Darko" is that it spends more time with its characters, since it's 20 minutes longer than the theatrical release. The Total Film review said that the new material is "impossible to either dismiss or embrace. On the one hand, it deepens relationships, Donnie spending more time with his family, girlfriend (Jena Malone) and shrink (Katharine Ross). On the other, it literally spells out meaning where ambiguity once swirled" (via GamesRadar+)
Detractors of the director's cut belabor this last point, arguing that the lack of ambiguity detracts from the mystery of "Donnie Darko," which leaves it a far less interesting work. The Atlantic claimed that "Richard Kelly made every mistake a director can make in revisiting his work," as the director's cut answers the film's questions, which were more compelling when left in the audience's hands, and replaces the melancholy "Killing Moon" by Echo and the Bunnymen with the much less fitting "Never Tear us Apart" by INXS in the opening scene.
