Donnie Darko
A website that could keep a secret.In 2001, we designed and built a website for Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko.
The film takes place over 28 days in a tangent universe, between 2 October and 30 October 1988.
The website did not retell those 28 days. It explored what came before and after.
It became a prologue and an epilogue. A way to enter the world of Donnie Darko without closing it down.
Beginnings.
What attracted us to Donnie Darko was its structure. It was not a film that wanted to be explained too quickly. It had clues, gaps, symbols, false exits, emotional static, and an ending that made you go back to the beginning.
The internet still felt open then. We were not thinking about data, conversion or engagement. We were thinking about experience, atmosphere, and how to build a world around a film without reducing its mystery.
Working closely with Richard Kelly, we treated the website as part of the story. Not as a promotional layer around it.
The internet still felt open then. We were not thinking about data, conversion or engagement. We were thinking about experience, atmosphere, and how to build a world around a film without reducing its mystery.
Working closely with Richard Kelly, we treated the website as part of the story. Not as a promotional layer around it.
The work.
The site was released in phases from early October 2001, with the final phase launching on 26 October, the film’s US release date.
There were no trailers, cast bios or conventional navigation. Instead, the visitor moved through fragments: documents, voices, satellite sites, hidden clues, unstable pages and fake malfunctions.
If someone emailed the “webmaster” to report a bug, they might receive a reply from Donnie, Frank, or someone who should not have been alive anymore.
We also created pages from The Philosophy of Time Travel, the fictional book at the heart of the film’s mythology. The text was written by Richard Kelly and designed by us as part of the online experience. Later, those pages were featured in The Donnie Darko Book, published in 2003.
We built three phases and then ran out of time. The site remained open-ended. People discussed hidden levels in forums: 4, 5, 6 and 7.
We had only built three.
But people kept searching, and somehow that became part of the work too.
There were no trailers, cast bios or conventional navigation. Instead, the visitor moved through fragments: documents, voices, satellite sites, hidden clues, unstable pages and fake malfunctions.
If someone emailed the “webmaster” to report a bug, they might receive a reply from Donnie, Frank, or someone who should not have been alive anymore.
We also created pages from The Philosophy of Time Travel, the fictional book at the heart of the film’s mythology. The text was written by Richard Kelly and designed by us as part of the online experience. Later, those pages were featured in The Donnie Darko Book, published in 2003.
We built three phases and then ran out of time. The site remained open-ended. People discussed hidden levels in forums: 4, 5, 6 and 7.
We had only built three.
But people kept searching, and somehow that became part of the work too.
What it was, named later.
At the time, we had no framework for what we were building. We understood that the website had to behave like the film. It had to open slowly, hide things, break things, and refuse to explain itself too quickly.
The before-and-after as structure.
The fake malfunction as story.
The missing levels as audience participation.
This is what I now call Narrative Architecture.
Story, interface, atmosphere, and audience behaviour operating as a single system.
We built it in 2001. I named the method twenty-five years later.
The before-and-after as structure.
The fake malfunction as story.
The missing levels as audience participation.
This is what I now call Narrative Architecture.
Story, interface, atmosphere, and audience behaviour operating as a single system.
We built it in 2001. I named the method twenty-five years later.
Donnie Darko website reel.
Credits.
Created in 2001 at Hi-ReS!, Alexandra Jugović & Florian Schmitt, in collaboration with Richard Kelly.
In 2024, Rich Holman rebuilt the site from the original Flash files. It is not complete. Some of the seams show. But it is there again.
View the rebuilt site →
In 2024, Rich Holman rebuilt the site from the original Flash files. It is not complete. Some of the seams show. But it is there again.
View the rebuilt site →
— BAFTA finalist
— Webby Award, Film Category
— Flash Film Festival San Francisco, Best Experimental Site
— ADC New York Silver, Interactive Media
— Prix Ars Electronica Net Excellence Award of Distinction
— Shown at the Barbican in Communicate: British Independent Graphic Design since the Sixties, 2004–2005.
— Shown again at the Barbican within Digital Archaeology, part of Digital Revolution, 2014.
— Included in 64 Bits, “an exhibition of the web’s lost past”, 2017.
— Referenced in numerous articles, books and publications.
— Webby Award, Film Category
— Flash Film Festival San Francisco, Best Experimental Site
— ADC New York Silver, Interactive Media
— Prix Ars Electronica Net Excellence Award of Distinction
— Shown at the Barbican in Communicate: British Independent Graphic Design since the Sixties, 2004–2005.
— Shown again at the Barbican within Digital Archaeology, part of Digital Revolution, 2014.
— Included in 64 Bits, “an exhibition of the web’s lost past”, 2017.
— Referenced in numerous articles, books and publications.
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Featured Work.
Amplifon →
From medical stigma to everyday belonging.
databloom →
Live data, shaped into experience.
Legacy.
Requiem for a Dream →
A website that rots, falls apart, and finally kicks you out.
Reach out directly.
alexandra@yugenstud.io