Troubled college freshman Luke suffers a violent family trauma and resurrects his childhood imaginary friend Daniel to help him cope. Charismatic and full of manic energy, Daniel helps Luke to achieve his dreams, before pushing him to the very brink of his sanity and into a desperate struggle for control of his mind — and his soul.
‘Daniel Isn’t Real’ (based off of Brian DeLeeuw’s novel ‘In This Way I Was Saved’) shares a lot of similarities with David Fincher's ‘Fight Club’, which followed a powerless office worker who happens to meet an assertive friend who helps him become more confident only for everything to get out of hand. I also kept thinking of Curtis Hanson’s underrated ‘Bad Influence’ with James Spader and Rob Lowe, Robert Mulligan’s ‘The Other’, Gregory Hoblit's 'Fallen', and Brad Anderson's 'Session 9'.
‘Daniel Isn’t Real’ is a slickly directed, spooky and surprisingly empathetic film about the monsters that dwell in the human mind.
- Jake Watt
Read Jake's full article...
https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-daniel-isnt-real-smart-and-sinister-psychological-horror
**It's not original, it's not remarkable, but it was a pretty decent job considering the budget and people involved.**
This is another one of those movies that I caught, by chance, starting on TV, and that I decided to watch. So I didn't have high expectations nor did I know exactly what I was going to find. When it was over, I can say that I reasonably liked what I saw: it intelligently explores the human mind and the dark side of the personality, it unfolds well until close to the end, and it is precisely the final part that disappointed me the most.
The script begins by introducing us to a young man who, as a child, had an imaginary friend who disappeared as he grew up. The pressure of university life and family problems, however, lead to the reappearance of the imaginary friend, named Daniel, and it doesn't take long to become obvious that his instincts are far more perverse and frightening than would be desirable.
Okay, the movie doesn't really bring us anything new. There are a lot of much better made movies about imaginary friends and split personalities. “Fight Club” is paradigmatic, and perhaps one of the best known, and the influence of this (and other) film here is quite clear. The positive side of all this is the elegance and efficient way in which the film tells its story. The downside is the extreme predictability, and the feeling that we are seeing a cheap copy of more established works. Everything would be reasonably forgivable if the final act was better: I hated that confrontation between sympathetic ego and diabolical alter-ego with a cheap carnival mask.
The two protagonists of the film are two young actors, both sons of parents we know well: Miles Robbins (son of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon) and Patrick Schwarzenegger (exactly, Arnold's son). Therefore, the cinematographic universe is not new for them and both seem to be at the same point in their careers: children of stars who try to succeed in their parents' profession, but who are still more recognized for being their children than for the work and talent they can to do. None of them did a bad job, the two actors did a committed and very honest job. Sasha Lane hasn't been too bad, but she doesn't have much to do. Better and more interesting than her was the performance of Mary Stuart Masterson, a veteran who only appears for a few minutes, but makes an excellent contribution.
Technically, it's a film that doesn't stand out or stand out, but that tries to do the best it can with the little money it has. And seen in that light, the film works well and does what it needs to. There are no surprises in the cinematography, the sets or the costumes, and there is an unfortunate job of characterization, towards the end, with that ugly and clearly fake sponge mask that Patrick Schwarzenegger had to wear.