Film promotional website

Website reviewed: "Donnie Darko" http://www.donniedarkofilm.com/

• Donnie Darko is one of my favourite movies, because it’s so weird, so different. I decided to do this section of the brief on Donnie Darko because I assumed that the website would be equally as interesting. In the end, it both was and wasn’t.
• This website really is very different, and definitely appropriate for the movie. It is completely unconventional, which is really a nice change, but also means that one has to learn how to navigate/what to do when you first use it, as it is not all that clear.
• The first page is mostly white space with grey spikes/triangles at the bottom right corner and a little video box/window with a jittering image of Donnie and a red “record” button. There is nothing else. Except for a small, red flickering dot, a few lines randomly placed on the screen, and “--->” at the top left corner of the page. These seem really random and don’t seem to serve a purpose. The “--->” seems to be a coding error?
• The site doesn’t give the user any instructions about what to do now, but forces the viewer to experiment in order to move on. This can be both frustrating and rewarding. This website seems to be all about the experience, rather than information, so I guess that this helps it achieve just that. This seems to be a good site if you have a lot of time on your hands and you want to figure out a puzzle.
• After clicking on the red “record” button, which is flashing at you (drawing your attention), it moves on to show how much time has passed since Donnie supposedly died in the movie. There is red text reading “proceed” – when you click on this, a pop-up window appears allowing users to enter a password to immediately move forward (to level 1). This is very very good for previous users, allowing them to skip a lot of time and somewhat pointless content – to move onto where they might have left the site before.
• Overall, the site seems to have been made using Flash elements and definitely work well to sell the movie. It is mysterious and confusing and interesting, but very frustrating if you get stuck on one of the quiz elements and can’t move on. There are even blogs over the internet which can give you a walkthrough of the site, and there seems to be many issues between browsers (I couldn’t move on from level 1 to 2 because of this).
• The design, however, is brilliant. There is always a lot of open, empty white space, which really seems to enforce a feeling of loneliness. Most of the content appears in the bottom right corner of the window and elements such as letters (presumably from the movie) shake, or the writing blurs to make you feel like you are Donnie – you are sleep walking.
• The site also has amazing audio. This comes in before you reach level one and is incredibly creepy. It includes full songs from the movie and eerie sound effects, such as a heart-rate monitor. It creates a really good environment for the site.
• I had to give up on the website, sadly, after only finishing level one because of issues with the browser (I read that a lot of other users encountered similar issues with certain browsers). I think that the site is great for promoting the movie – it has a very strange and interesting aesthetic, is beautifully designed and makes you feel like Donnie Darko. However, it gets frustrating fast – if you want to get to a certain area, you have to go through a lot of pages to do so. Everything is slow – the animations take a while to finish and you can’t move on until they have.
• This site could have been greatly improved if it provided viewers with a "skip" button, or an easier way to access the information/page that they need.