WHAT IF

[WISHYOUKNEW]

not sure i have my whole theory figured out, but notice how the movie kinda goes backwards .... what if this whole insane shi with the bunny is donnies after life ?? and he really did die???

does this make anysense to anyone else???

[reignman]

Well, you could give an explaination or at least some ideas/examples that support this hypothesis.

[WISHYOUKNEW]

what i mean is no one really knows what the afterlife is or if it exists so what it this is the directors version of it, and beacuse Donnie dies they show him what would have happened if he hadnt died. if you think of the beginning of the movie as the conclusion and the end as the begining it kinda makes sense,.

[reignman]

Ah.

Well, Donnie died on Oct. 2, and the movie is basically him alive after Oct. 2. I see what you mean, but it isn't exactly what would have happened, because Donnie was rescued by the manipulated dead Frank from the primary universe, and there were the manipulated living and Frank making Donnie do things, and weird stuff like the axe in the bronze monument, etc. The best thing that would show what would've happened if Donnie didn't die would be the original primary universe timeline, where Frank runs over Gretchen because of a natural course of events, instead of Frank making Donnie do stuff and the manipulated living all leading up to that. When Donnie died, he's laughing, so we know that he dreamed about the tangent universe (explained in POTT) and that his death had (retroactively) happened after the events of the tangent universe (and most of the film).

While the end is Donnie dying, the tangent universe gives him a reason to die, which is to save the universe.