Do you ever do stuff against your own better judgment? I’m not sure where in my right mind I was, but never in a million years should I have thought that there was anything salvageable in S. Darko, the improbable sequel to Richard Kelly’s 2001 cult classic. Now Donnie Darko either baked your noodle, or was otherwise best enjoyed while baked. It’s sequel by comparison is a sloppy mess that wants to capture the picture puzzle deliberateness of Kelly’s work, while trying to paint something that’s even darker and sadder than what was found in part one. The difference: mostly that I gave a crap for Donnie and cast. No one amongst this vapid, Gen Y appealing ensemble is remotely interesting.

The story picks up seven years after an airplane engine inexplicably fell out of the sky and crushed Donnie Darko to death. His sister Samantha (Daveigh Chase) has apparently doubted her own commitment to Sparkle Motion and left it far behind, travelling cross-country, Thelma & Louise style, with Corey (Briana Evigan). Their car breaks down near a small desert town where they meet a colourful group of characters. There’s the laconic Randy (Ed Westwick) who helps out the cash strapped girls with their car, the creepy evangelical Pastor John (Matthew Davies) and the shell-shocked “Iraq Jack” (James Lafferty) who everyone in town seems to think is a child murderer.

But while Donnie Darko was led with great charisma and aplomb by Jake Gyllenhaal, who seemed to revel in his role as a slightly disturbed suburban prophet, everyone in S. Darko seems to walk around like ghosts. Actually, I think ghosts are too expressive to be used as a comparative in this example; blank sheets of paper would be more apropos. There’s a large cast, but there’s no focus, and the title character feels like a secondary consideration in what I supposed was her story. Samantha isn’t the one plagued by visions of a guy in a bunny suit, but rather it’s “Iraq Jack” that’s plagued with world ending foresight and a date with death. His guide is a spectral Samantha, who actually spends most of the movie not dead.

But I’m going to go back to “Iraq Jack,” because I found his inclusion and place in the story to be rather odd for a couple of reasons. First, I’m not sure what the extent of Laffery’s acting acumens is, I’ve only seen him in this and a few episodes of One Tree Hill, but yeah, he was way off for this character. I found him neither menacing nor particularly disturbed. Second, he’s supposed to be a Gulf War vet (the movie takes place in 1995) but he doesn’t look old enough. In fact he doesn’t look old enough to get into a war movie, let alone a war. That’s probably my bias though, and that’s okay, but the first part stands. In terms of terrorizing transients, he’s no more frightening than Otis, the loveable town drunk from The Andy Griffith Show.

It’s too bad because this movie desperately needed a little TLC, as in Thoroughly Life-like Characters. “Iraq Jack” would be an obvious choice considering his D-I-Y head gear, but no, they left it in the hands of a CW pretty boy and got what they paid for. I presumed that this film would try and expand on the Darko universe by having Samantha get a little science dropped on her (she has Grandma Death’s book after all) by Frank the Bunny. In fact, it would have been interesting to see her grapple with the same stuff Donnie did, but maybe handle it better than him becoming some kind of time master in the process. Now that would have been worth seeing, or at least worth seeing more than a boring retread of The Stand by way of Donnie Darko with cardboard cut-outs instead of actual people. But like I said, I should have known better.