Daniel Isn't Real Review (Film, 2019)
content warning: gore, blood, foul language, death by suicide
When Luke was a small child, his imaginary friend Daniel came into his life. Daniel was the best at coming up with fun ideas to make life better. Then he tried to murder Luke’s mom by forcing her to overdose on psychiatric medication. Luke and his mom locked Daniel into an antique dollhouse to keep their family safe. Luke, now a full time university student, needs some help again, and Daniel is ready to hop in and show him all the fun and amazing ways he can get whatever he wants out of life.
Daniel Isn’t Real is a horror film about mental health. I’ll be direct: I probably wasn’t in the best headspace to take this particular narrative in. This is a thoroughly researched exploration of mania, obsession, and depression. It also, narratively, comes from a place of skepticism about therapy and medical treatment for mental wellness. Luke’s mother taught him not to trust doctors, causing her to spiral further and further into her own paranoid delusions.
Writer/director Adam Egypt Mortimer adapts Brian DeLeeuw’s novel In This Way I Was Saved into a terrifying and beautiful horror film. Luke is pressured to study law in school, but he really wants to be an artist. Daniel encourages him to pursue his dreams, bringing him into the larger community of artists in his school.
The film is filled with haunting art displays from all the major characters. Young Luke’s origami tea set transforms into his mother’s obsessive collages all over the house pulled from the secret messages she finds in every book she encounters. Older Luke’s interest in photography becomes Daniel’s way to teach Luke how to capture anyone’s interest with a click of the camera. No detail is too small to ignore and, realistically, any shot that lingers just a bit too long in the first act is foreshadowing something terrifying in the third act.
In horror, that childhood imaginary best friend is usually shorthand for a possession or haunting. The difference is most horror stories would end with that triumphant moment of Luke and his mother forcing Daniel into the dollhouse, locking the door, and hiding the key. That scene happens maybe 10 minutes into a feature length film. There’s really not much of a roadmap in horror for a traumatized child to free his dangerous imaginary friend as an adult and pretend that the imaginary friend didn’t straight up try to murder the only family he had left. It’s a concept that allows for experimentation in pacing, tone, and character development.
Daniel Isn’t Real is hard to define. Somewhere at the intersection of May, Fight Club, Coraline, The Exorcist, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, The Omen, and The Hunger is the story of Luke and Daniel. Mortimer has a clear plan for what he wants scene by scene, but scene by scene Daniel Isn’t Real can feel likely an entirely different film. The tone is consistent, but the content is unpredictable.
If you feel safe exploring a horror film with no reservations about tackling mental illness, you might have a great experience with Daniel Isn’t Real. I’ve never seen another horror film quite like this before.
Daniel Isn’t Real is streaming on Shudder.
