IN April 2002, the director Richard Kelly was walking through the East Village when he saw something he never thought he'd see again: a poster promoting his film ''Donnie Darko.'' An unsettling movie with spiritual overtones that's set in an 80's suburb, ''Darko'' opened in November 2001 and promptly closed. Given the national mood, it didn't help that a major scene showed a part of an airplane falling into a house. Jake Gyllenhaal, who plays Donnie, wasn't yet famous, and the character, a troubled teenager haunted by visions of a man in a bunny suit, was hardly heroic. The movie's only big names -- Patrick Swayze, Noah Wyle and Drew Barrymore (who was also an executive producer) -- were in minor roles. It took in only half a million dollars.
When he saw the ''Donnie Darko'' poster outside the Two Boots Pioneer Theater on Avenue A, Mr. Kelly said recently by telephone, he first thought ''someone was playing a trick on me.'' Then, he said, ''I heard these guys talking about this movie with an evil rabbit and I thought, 'Maybe this isn't over yet.' ''
Indeed, it was just beginning. Over the course of the next two years, Mr. Kelly's film developed a cult following. And on Friday a director's cut of ''Donnie Darko'' will open in New York. Most director's cuts are released with the idea that the movies will build on their original success -- think ''E. T.'' or ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind.'' In this case, the idea is to give fans who love the film on video -- and others -- their first chance to see it on a big screen.
Viewers coming to ''Donnie Darko'' for the first time may well leave the theater wondering exactly what they've just seen. On the surface, Mr. Kelly's film is a pastiche of horror flick and teenage comedy references: the depressed protagonist who reaches through a medicine cabinet mirror; the teacher (Ms. Barrymore) who's just as haunted as her students; the invisible friend who turns real -- and evil. On another level, it's a ''Twilight Zone'' episode writ large, in which Donnie, who may or may not be insane, enters an alternate universe that may or may not actually exist. To prevent the events of that world from happening in this one, he must turn back time or watch it turn back around him: in true ''Twilight Zone'' fashion, it's hard to know whether Donnie controls events or if they control him. Clever foreshadowing and cryptic dialogue add to a pervading sense of unease. (Donnie to man in rabbit outfit: ''Tell me why you're wearing that stupid bunny suit.'' Man to Donnie: ''Why are you wearing that stupid human suit?'') The ending is also ambiguous.
''It's designed to be this puzzle,'' Mr. Kelly said. ''There's a lot to chew on.'' Some of this is deeper -- or at least far more challenging -- than what's usually served up in indie movies packed with ironic 80's references. The resolution, such as it is, involves the complexities of time travel -- wormholes, tangent universes and so forth -- in a way that asks larger questions about free will. Like the Wachowski brothers with ''The Matrix,'' Mr. Kelly took a genre usually seen as disposable and worked in a philosophical undercurrent. ''What I tried to do is come up with this pop, sci-fi comic-book tale that could resonate on a spiritual level,'' Mr. Kelly said. Parts of the movie have the questing quality of late-night dorm-room discussions. But the film is too funny to collapse under its own weight. When Donnie asks his science teacher whether predestination implies the existence of God, the teacher replies that he can't discuss that without risking his job.
With its troubled antihero and evident distrust of authority, ''Donnie Darko'' owes a debt to the writings of Philip K. Dick, whose short stories served as the basis for the films ''Blade Runner,'' ''Minority Report'' and ''Paycheck,'' among others. ''Dick was desperately searching for meaning, and he was doing so with speculative fiction with big ideas like time travel and teleportation,'' Mr. Kelly said. ''I was trying to take these science ideas and have them resonate on a religious level.''
Given Mr. Kelly's ambitions, as well as the kind of genre vehicle in which he tried to realize them, it should come as no surprise that ''Donnie Darko'' found its audience with midnight screenings. The Pioneer Theater, where Mr. Kelly saw the poster, began showing his movie on Friday and Saturday nights in January 2002, a few months after it left theaters. ''We had been discussing where the next generation of midnight movies would come from,'' said Phil Hartman, the Pioneer's owner. ''How many times can you show 'Pink Flamingos' and 'Eraserhead'? '' Each week the movie filled about half the Pioneer's 100 seats -- a success for a midnight film -- and it was soon picked up for similar screenings by the Visions Cinema in Washington and then the Coolidge Corner Movie Theater near Boston.
The film received its first real media attention in the fall of 2002, when it opened in England. ''Britain had been going through a fascination with the 80's, and this had the music and the fashion that people were interested in,'' said Ekow Eshun, a London cultural critic. One of the songs on the soundtrack, a cover of the Tears for Fears 1989 hit ''Mad World,'' made the top 10.
By that time the ''Donnie Darko'' DVD, issued in June 2002, was a hit in the United States. Newmarket Films, which had distributed ''Donnie Darko,'' watched the sales figures rising and decided to release it in theaters again, and Mr. Kelly took the opportunity to make some changes. He has added 20 minutes and inserted titles that make the ending somewhat clearer, though still far from straightforward. Not incidentally, said Bob Berney, the president of Newmarket, ''I think it will open the door to another DVD version.''
Ms. Barrymore, who decided to help produce the film and take a small role based on the strength of Mr. Kelly's script, said she knew the film would find an audience eventually. ''But I certainly never expected the cultish aspect,'' she said in a telephone interview. ''I think no matter where I am, the film people come up to me with the most passion about is 'Donnie Darko.' ''
Mr. Kelly said that the belated success of his first feature has encouraged him to take the same kind of chances with his second. His next project, which he will again write and direct, is ''a big epic kind of futuristic comedy,'' he said.
''I wish I could have made a second film by now,'' he said. And then, with barely a hint of irony, he added, ''I don't want to be a one-hit wonder.''