Few movies overtly avert classification, creating problems for the catchphrasers and marketing experts charged with boiling a film down to its essence. It’s bad business, some say, to forget genres so completely as to alienate all sorts of target audiences.

For “Donnie Darko,” alienation would be the right word, but fear not this foreign visitor. For 112 minutes, the earth stands still for all the right reasons.

Beauty and heart permeate this 2001 fantasy/mystery/drama/romance/ teen/sci-fi release, a movie given little chance even with box office stalwart Drew Barrymore co-starring and executive producing. The reason? This is writer/director Richard Kelly’s vision, his first major work and a product of a development full of dreams. This is his baby, his reason for creating cinematic works and the first chance for him to say something.

Given the ever-changing Hollywood landscape and multitude of hotshot talents waiting in the wings, you can forgive the 27-year-old Kelly for packing so much quietly confident camera work, telling dialogue and psychological perspective into a movie that drew a paltry $500,000 at the box office. He’s created a movie that will find its audience, just a little late for the big screen.

For a long while, the only indication that something’s awry in conventional cinema land are subtle unanswered questions and the opening montage set to Echo and the Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon.” The year’s 1988, which matters only for a few music choices and well-placed Michael Dukakis references. And Donnie (Jake Gyllenhall), with sunken shoulders and mussed up hair, could lead a conventional teen-drama kind of life. If it weren’t for those crazy delusions/dreams/sleepwalks …

To categorize what Donnie experiences is central to the movie’s mystery, and acts as a centerpiece of oddity within an all-too-real world. This much remains true in anyone’s analysis: A six-foot bunny named Frank – with a metal mask who claims he comes from the future – speaks to Donnie in his pseudo-dreams, and Frank very well could be responsible for saving Donnie from a freak jet-engine-through-the-roof accident.

It’s OK, we can let that one digest.

The world probably could be divided into people who are intrigued and aghast at such a plot development. For the former, the movie seldom disappoints. And for the latter, avoid this film like a plague of locusts – it could sting.

Curiosity won’t go unrewarded. Kelly’s script weaves scenes of familial familiarity with the increasing heady mix of love, loneliness and the wonderment inherent in the question, “Is the future already written?” Donnie by day takes profane yet endearing jabs at his sister Elizabeth (real-life sister Maggie Gyllenhall), and by night morphs himself into an unblinking, horrifying zombie of unbridled adolescence.

The movie bridges the real with the unreal by performing amazing tricks of theme and context. While Donnie battles the inanity of an overly simplified feel-good philosopher (Patrick Swayze in an oddly charming role), his internal self struggles with divine intervention clouded by doubts of pill-popping medication and meandering visits with a psychiatrist. Can a teen unlock the universe’s secrets while trying to figure out all of life’s daily worries?

Careful viewings uncover much more thought than the surface shows. It isn’t easy to string mystery for two hours, so the direction takes a selective omniscient approach. The fades to black at the end of each scene are like powerful eyes slowly blinking, with another aspect awaiting sight. So although the story chooses precise moments, these moments propel just the right amount of revelation – without even thinking of the grander reason for such a storytelling device.

Those types of thoughts deserve questioning, because many times there is deeper meaning. The DVD allows for much more understanding than the film provides, with 20 deleted scenes that include director commentary and a glimpse at the book which plays so heavily into the plot’s culmination – “The Philosophy of Time Travel.” Reading on a DVD may be a chore, but the clarity offered makes owning this DVD an easy purchase for die-hard fans.

Appreciation for the unknown is made easy with such combinations of brains and heart. After the film concludes with elusive closure, you recall the beginning.