Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, “Donnie Darko” got bigger than Hot Pockets around here.

When… Somehow, when I wasn’t looking, “Donnie Darko” got bigger than Hot Pockets around here.

When I talk to a friend, relative or acquaintance, we tend to start on the subject of movies – because I’m obsessed with them. During the last few months, I have been surprised to hear that mostly college-aged people are discovering – and falling in love with -“Donnie Darko.” And not just film people, a lot of normal people too – mainstream people, people who generally go to the theater once a year to see the latest “Austin Powers” sequel.

The thing is, “Donnie Darko” is not “Spider-Man.” It is downbeat, difficult and damn near impossible to comprehend. You’d think most people would hate it.

So how did it find an audience? How did it find us?

Before I get into this, I pledge to keep my drooling over the film in check as I explore these questions.

OK, let’s do some history first.

After some early attention from Harry Knowles and his stable of geeks at Ain’t it Cool News, who praised the film’s wildly inventive screenplay, it premiered at Sundance 2001, where it played to mixed reaction (audiences found it to be “slow,” prompting director Richard Kelly to trim about 10 minutes off the running time) and fell into the hands of Newmarket, a just-formed indie studio. When it was released later that year on Oct. 26, it was that movie that plays in the art-house theater of a big city for one week and then disappears. According to Variety, its final gross was a meager $517,000. It never played in Pittsburgh.

Last year, on March 19, 20th Century Fox released the film on video and DVD. This is when something happened – we can say with certainty that the film remained “undiscovered” up until this point.

So what made the college crowd rent it? I doubt it was anything on the video sleeve or the DVD case, which Fox slapped with unremarkable cut-and-pasted-faces artwork and a bogus plot description likening the film to “Final Destination.” Was it Patrick Swayze?

All I can figure is the film started to move because of geeks such as myself who remembered the early Internet buzz. The question now becomes, how did it get into the hands of normal people and where do they do they get off liking it, damn it?

Sorry.

Could it be that college kids are responding to the film because of its replay value? You can watch it again and again and never quite figure everything out, but also never doubt that it is reasoned, that it can be figured out.

Is it the ’80s? The film not only takes place in, but also looks and feels like it was made in the decade of our youth. It fills me with nostalgia.

Or is it the character? Do we share in Donnie’s disillusionment? Do we identify with him as he faces a troubled world – supposedly an alternate universe – in which he is manipulated into doing things he doesn’t want to do?

Could it just be that a film of art-house quality has slipped through, that casual moviegoers have stumbled into something Hollywood would never give them – and might I add, they would never ask for – a challenging film for which there are no easy answers – and it has exhilarated them? It’s a vision so complete, a work of so many themes and possible interpretations, built on startlingly original mythology, and all without a hint of condescension.

I think it’s maybe a couple of these. And I think I got drool everywhere.

“Donnie Darko” will be playing at the Harris Jan. 27 to 30.