“Sex and death, I guess.”: DANIEL ISN'T REAL Turns The Imaginary Friend Into The Imaginary Fiend
Rating: 🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠
I can tell you right now that this movie isn’t for anyone, and that’s DEFINITELY okay. That being said, I’ve devised a little test to help you decide if this movie if for you (Buzzfeed, eat your heart out). If the phrase, “Cronenberg Directing Fight Club” doesn’t make you giddy, then I would go ahead and bow out now because things are only going to get weirder from here. Daniel Isn’t Real is delightfully weird and grotesque. It fulfills the itch of familial horror this girl is a massive fan of. Part macabre issues, (think Holden Caulfield if he grew up in the Bates Hotel so Norman Bates with a funny hat) part mind fuck, this movie was one of my absolute favorite horror releases of 2019.
Daniel Isn’t Real focuses on Luke (Miles Robbins), a college freshman whose childhood trauma re-manifests in the form of his “imaginary” friend Daniel (Patrick Schwarzenegger). In an attempt to cope with his parents’ messy divorce and his mother’s untreated mental illness, Luke “creates” Daniel as a playmate and confidant. However, things take a super dark turn, when, um, Daniel attempts to poison Luke’s mother, leading Luke to imprison Daniel in a dollhouse for over a decade. During his freshman year of college, Daniel reemerges, and Luke is left to wonder whether he is succumbing to his mother’s mental illness or if Daniel is something much darker than he could have ever imagined.
The tension between Robbins and Schwarzenegger is palpable (and often pulp-able). The effects are KILLER (and practical). Mary Stuart Masterson’s performance as Luke’s mother Claire is unnerving but the love for her son is still somehow apparent. Sasha Lane’s supporting performance as Cassie provides a wonderful catalyst for the final act. It’s absolutely engaging from the wild start to the tragic end. Every story has two sides, and sometimes, they’re worse than anything you could ever imagine.
Baillee MaCloud Perkins is a writer by day and a writer by night, so her Google search history is an actual nightmare. She also once met John Stamos on a plane, and he told her she was pretty. Follow her on Instagram, @lisa_frankenstein_ for an obscene amount of dog photos, movie-themed outfits, and shameless self-promotion.