Hallucinations In Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko is a 2001 dark psychological drama that revolves around the main character, Donnie Darko, after he survives a freak accident. The film follows him as he tries to understand his delusions of the world ending and a man dressed in a bunny suit called Frank. His delusions and hallucinations lead him to kill people and even set someones house on fire all because he is following the directions of Frank. At the end of the movie he goes back in time through a metal orb he hallucinates and seems to lets himself get killed by the airplane that crashes into his house that caused the freak accident.

The other characters in the movie state that Donnie has a mental disorder called paranoid schizophrenia. According to Christian Nordqvist this

disorder is, “a subtype of schizophrenia in which the patient has delusions (false beliefs) that a person or some individuals are plotting against them or members of their family.” This would explain why he would be avoiding tell them of his actions or plots. However, it is very possible that he has just schizophrenia as well. His hallucinates of time travel and Frank, the man in a bunny suit, would suggest that it is more than just paranoid schizophrenia considering this side effects do not necessarily fall into these categories.
The character exemplifies schizophrenia by showing the characters hallucinations and delusions through the course of the movie. They do this by digitally editing floating metal orbs into the image. Most people would consider these orbs absurd or unnatural but to a schizophrenia person these delusions are normal and occur frequently.

The movie portrays the disorder as close to what you would think of schizophrenia.

Because schizophrenia doesn’t have an exact set of symptoms it is hard to justify exactly what is occurring in someones mind. I think they chose to show the disorder like this because it is typical of a person to consider hallucinations when they think of the symptoms. Having the character have hallucinations is an easy way to quickly pick up that the character suffers from this disorder. However I do believe that this movie did over exaggerate the symptoms a bit too much. It is uncommon for people who has schizophrenia to go towards murder and belief of time travel. For the closest facts given to demonstrate schizophrenia i believe this movie gives an as close to an accurate example as it can. The way they show how he hallucinates is a decent portrayal of schizophrenia.

Even as this movie does demonstrate for the most part what schizophrenia is it is very common for movies to over do it. They can take it to the point where it seems to example insanity which is untrue for most cases of schizophrenia. This can lead people to become scared and even stereotype people with schizophrenia. These inaccurate thoughts can be fatal to people with these symptoms and cause them to lose hope and even kill themselves. To attempt to resolve these issues is difficult but is constantly being fought to

help.