Daniel Isn’t Real But the Psychological Horror Is
“All the real artists are either dead or broke.”
~Cassie~
From its brief but brutal and horrifying opening to the films tragic end, Daniel Isn’t Real is, for a surreal psychological horror film, as real as it can get regarding the madness of creativity and the risk of its dark decent. The film opens with an almost David Lynch like reflection of a microcosm of idyllic community within a diner. Diners eating breakfast, the waitress behind the counter serving up the usual coffee to an unseen customer when suddenly and without warning a young man enters the diner with a shotgun and begins killing people.
Shortly after, a young boy, desperate to get away from his parents irreconcilable differences and their crumbling marriage and walking the neighborhood stumbles upon the diner and the now dead body of the killer flung halfway out the door. Standing before this in horror, another child standing next to him asks him if he wants to play. It is soon established that the somewhat older boy played by Nathan Reid who has befriended young Luke (Griffin Robert Faulkner) is just an imaginary friend named Daniel. Daniel isn’t real.
Luke’s new best friend Daniel is his only friend, and the both of them play endlessly and creatively. They use broomsticks to sword fight, in their own imaginations wielding swords, but to his mom Claire (Mary Stuart Masterson), there is just her little boy happily swinging a broomstick in some fierce but invisible battle. Dad is now gone but Mom tells Luke with satisfaction that they are going to be just fine. Things however are not fine.
It doesn’t take long before Daniel’s creativity urges Luke to put an entire bottle of prescription medication (probably mom’s anti-psychotic meds), into her smoothie. The consequence is Claire becomes violently ill, confronting her son on what he did. Of course, Luke not willing to accept responsibility for this blames it on Daniel. Once mom is better she demands that Luke put Daniel into a doll house kept in his room. Luke does so and Daniel is now trapped in a doll house.
The next time we see Luke (now played by Miles Robbins) he is a socially awkward college student. His mother is now a mental mess and he himself is seeing the school psychiatrist or psychologist Dr. Cornelius Braun (Chukwudi Iwuji). After Luke has a hallucination he tells the shrink all about it. The Dr. responds by asking to dig into his past of a time he might of seen things that weren’t really there. Luke admits to having an imaginary friend.
The shrink most imprudently (this is not a perfect film but rather a near perfect horror film with eye rolling bad ideas) encourages Luke to revisit his imaginary friend and embrace his own creativity. Luke does and the fun and games begin. Directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer, and his acid-trippy script co-written with Brian DeLeeuw, deserve some attention. While the film is not flawless the flaws are easily overlooked while Mortimer weaves his wicked tale.
Daniel (now played by Patrick Swarzenegger) means Luke is now unleashed. The grown Daniel becomes his trusted confidant who shows him how far a little confidence can go and soon Luke is meeting girls, getting phone numbers and soon after meeting Cassie, an artist who immediately beguiles him. Daniel functions as a darker version of Cyrano de Begerac helping Luke do and say the right things to attract Cassie’s eye and even her heart.
It’s nearly thirty minutes into Daniel Isn’t Real when Cassie flippantly spews this line about great artists either being dead or broke, it is wonderfully simple expression that carry profound weight. This psychological horror film is all about creativity and art. Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler) made his own horror film looking at the art world, dealers and critics, and though Gilroy his a director of note and one deserving of respect, Velvet Buzzsaw doesn’t work near as well as Daniel Isn’t Real. Gilroy focused too much on the pretentiousness of the art world, where Mortimer and DeLeeuw are more interested in examining the purity of art.
It is not that there are not moments of pretentiousness. Cassie at one point takes a hammer to her most recent art work and destroys it out of some kind of artistic rebellion but as pretentious as it might be, it works and it shows Cassie and Luke falling each other while making its statements about art and artists. For Luke, it’s not entirely clear how much of his own burgeoning photography is his own creation or the increasingly real and a mind of his own Daniel. As Luke begins to casually accept Cassie’s compliments about his art, Daniel becomes jealous and angry.
As Luke’s confidence grows he becomes more willing to challenge Daniel for the alpha male title. Luke’s confidence is also very attractive to Cassie who has painted his portrait which features a dark shadow figure with finger like protrusions that remind Luke of the hallucination he had. He knows this shadow is Daniel and implores Cassie to tell her what exactly she saw while painting him. She of course can only answer as an artist can.
They are soon in bed and bonding physically, while Daniel watches alone. The struggle for control becomes murkier and murkier as it becomes clear that the struggle is Daniel’s for the control of Luke’s body. At this point, like most horror films tend to do, things get kind of ridiculous with Luke’s shrink becoming much more shamanic in his efforts to help Luke deal with the unleashed Daniel, but the ridiculousness never mars the film. A horror movie worth watching more than once.