The latest in our series of writers paying tribute to their most rewatched comfort films is an unusual journey back to the 1980s through the lens of the early 2000s
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f the stereotypical feelgood movie is a cashmere comfort blanket – the kind of film that leaves viewers blissed out on the sofa as the credits roll and Bridget Jones finally gets to snog Mark Darcy – I should probably notify a qualified team of specialists that my own is a tale of teenage alienation, suburban hypocrisy, apocalyptic dread and a man in a monstrous rabbit suit issuing stern instructions about death. Then again, it does have a considerably better soundtrack.
Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko explored alternate realities decades before the Marvel films and Everything Everywhere All at Once made the multiverse a pop-cultural touchstone. Its tree-lined streets, Halloween skies and teenagers pedalling through suburbia were like a weirder, sadder blueprint for Stranger Things long before Hawkins existed. It’s a suburban fever dream about fate, madness and collapsing timelines, a nightmarish physics puzzle steeped in existential dread. But beneath all the cult-film weirdness, it is also the oddly uplifting story of a lonely, damaged kid who finally understands his place in the world – and sacrifices himself to save it against the backdrop of some of the most luminous 80s alt-pop atmospherics ever recorded.
