Daniel Isn't Real

2019 Directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer

But he's coming out to play

A troubled college freshman, Luke, suffers a violent family trauma and resurrects his childhood imaginary friend Daniel to help him cope.

Miles Robbins Patrick Schwarzenegger Sasha Lane Hannah Marks Mary Stuart Masterson Katie Chang Chukwudi Iwuji Jamar Greene Cara Ronzetti Michael Cuomo Andrew Bridges Madeleine Mfuru Nathan Chandler Reid Daniel Marconi Rosanne Ma Lynn Marocola

Alternative Titles

내 상상의 친구, 다니엘 이즌 리얼, Daniel není skutečný

fantasy mystery thriller horror

100 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★ 13

How is almost nobody talking
about how absolutely fucking
balls to the walls wild this is?
Review by Dyrnott ★★★½ 8

It was very entertaining! It is very different than what I expected. It was grittier! I feel there is an ideology/mythology there that the surface was barely being scratched. They could have developed more what makes Daniel Daniel! I still think it’s good and I’d love to see a sequel so that the mythology of Daniel could be developed! Check it out!
Review by Evan “Kaizō Haya-shill” Pincus ★★★ 1

Pretty blatantly Hereditary + Mandy + Jacob's Ladder + Fight Club by way of the best of 80's NYC trash (think Henenlotter and Lustig), but for better and for worse, ends up reminding me of nothing more than Andrew Getty's The Evil Within. Doesn't have the revealing outsider thrill of Getty's oddball late-night classic, but makes up for it in sheer commitment to the bit. This totally mishandles mental health, literalizes every metaphor six ways from Sunday, but unlike other movies that try to pretend they have nuance, this takes genuine pride in the ludicrous dumb energy. Everyone is having so much fun with this goofy, sleazy nonsense. Schwarzenegger is ridiculous. I've said before that I prefer this SpectreVision psych-horror freakout type thing to the "elevated" stuff, but if this is how those approaches are bridged, more please.
Review by Ian West ★★ 9

Sure... it looked nice and all that but this just wasn’t my thing... plus while watching this I couldn’t stop thinking about how I should’ve watched the blu I scooped of Fulci’s Conquest instead.
Review by Siegel™ ★★★½ 6

an openly raw experience of the inescapable possibility of genetic illness, a fear that we might soon be forced to accept our own insanity as an inevitability. Daniel isn't real, yet he's forever a suffocating reminder of the terrorizing force of the self-destructive mind.
persistently unambiguous yet highly conceptual. it's hereditary, but we know from the beginning he never stood a chance. it's fight club, but we know from the beginning and are constantly reminded that daniel isn't real - the entirety of the film depends on that knowledge (hence it being the title). the filmmakers had one goal: to make the viewer experience the claustrophobia of genetic psychosis, and in this way it is immeasurably powerful.
Review by CatinmyBrain ★★★ 3

I've dealt with PTSD for decades now, I'm a survivor of trauma and I'm pretty sceptical about any film that tries to tackle mental illness.
Not just horror movies, movies in general.
Most of the Oscar nominated films portraying mental illness as a subject are miles behind stuff like Japanese anime and pro wrestling.
So? How does Daniel Isn't Real measure up? Well. It tries a lot more than other films and I'll give it points for that. And it's very interesting and a lot more intelligent than people give it credit for being.
Daniel Isn't Real is the story of a young boy who witnesses a horrible act of violence and it scars him and leads him to seek…
Review by Nicholas Faron ★★★½ 2

I think we might have a secret gem right under our noses. While, nothing great. It subverts our expectations on how we view the deepest and darkest parts of ones self. its pretty damn compelling and it gave me some much needed chills down my spine.
Review by WraithApe ½ 17

The awful nadir of FrightFest 2019. Adam Egypt Mortimer's follow up to The Ladybird Film of Conflict Resolution is The Ladybird Film of Tortured Metaphor. It does for mental health what Some Kind of Hate did for the subject of bullying. A film of such mind-numbing insensitivity and stupidity, I can't even begin to do it justice. Suffice it to say, various ways of treating schizophrenia are explored, from a witch doctor with a Tibetan singing bowl to a broomstick that doubles as a sword.
And why is it that aspiring artists always live in vast warehouse apartments and do all their painting with a palette knife?
Fuck this film.
Review by pd187 ★★ 21

arnold 100% didnt watch this shit but told his son he did
tried to get excited when some cenobite guys showed up but it was still just indifferently-shot fx and slow.. droning... zooms on symmetrical pink-lit hallways. i cant believe this is cornier than BLISS! shouldve googled the director before watching c8.alamy.com/comp/WB9BN3/cineworld-leicester-square-london-uk-25-august-2019-adam-egypt-mortimer-attends-daniel-isnt-real-adam-egypt-mortimer-credit-julie-edwardsalamy-live-news-WB9BN3.jpg
Review by Warp ★★½ 3

With the exception for a few gory images it mostly felt like a PG-13 movie targeted for a teenage audience. It for sure wasn’t boring, the first half was decent and showed some potential, but the second half couldn’t live that up. Although it was awesome to hear that Boy Harsher song in it.
Review by Jacob Knight ★★★ 1

The killer inside me. More traumatic horror psychedelia from SpectreVision, bathed in the same crimson six-sided Jodorowsky glow as MANDY. Makes up for a few wonky performances (Arnie’s kid is B-A-D) by diving head first into demonic hysterics by the final reel (not to mention some rather icky body horror). Super unsettling and filled with images that linger longer after the credits roll.
Review by ˗ˏˋ Liam ˊˎ˗ ★★★★ 1

paimon wants what daniel has

Recent reviews

Review by ladyioan ★★★

mmm boy, what that mouth do? ;)
Review by chris 🔪 ★★★

this was definitely interesting
Review by sadspookyalanna ★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Ugh. He fails again, but a little less this time. It sucks because I think Mortimer has a lot of promise as a director. Some of the shots are really beautiful, but the writing and the acting...were not it. Jesus Christ.
The idea itself was promising, though pretty derivative of better films (like hereditary and fight club - literally this is fight club for angsty teens). The acting was NOT good, especially patrick’s performance as daniel. He wasn’t at all convincing in the role as someone who was domineering and increasingly aggressive - it was very cringe. The two main leads seemed to have gotten the role based on who their parents are and not their talents. My god Susan’s…
Review by Sean Kelly on Movies ★★★★

On its surface, it would be easy to describe Daniel Isn’t Real as Drop Dead Fred done as a horror film. However, the description turns out not be that simple, as Adam Egypt Mortimer presents a quite original horror tale that begins as a story about mental illness and ends up being something quite different indeed. I don’t want to get too deep into the many twists and turns of the story, though it quickly becomes apparent that Daniel is more than simply just Luke’s imaginary friend.
The performance that stands out the most in Daniel Isn’t Real is Patrick Schwarzenegger as the titular character, who begins as a suave and cool friend to Luke, before slowly revealing his more…
Review by Pia Raboldt ★★★★

really cool.
Review by Robb Pastor

Childhood wonderment meets the horror of the adult world in Daniel Isn’t Real, director Adam Egypt Mortimer’s (Some Kind of Hate) darkly twisted take on the “imaginary best friend” concept, critically acclaimed as “one of the year’s most disturbing out-and-out horror films” (Kim Newman).; ; Luke Nightingale, a lonely young boy with an emotionally unstable mother, invents a friend named Daniel who leads them both into a world of fantasy and imagination. After Daniel tricks Luke into doing something terrible, Luke is forced to banish him to the bottom of his subconscious. Twelve years later, Luke (Miles Robbins, Halloween 2018), now a college freshman, brings Daniel (Patrick Schwarzenegger, Midnight Sun) back — and he now appears as a charming, manipulative…
Review by Bradster777 ★★★★

This was a lot of fun! It’s a really interesting concept with some great visual imagery to go along with it!
Review by Harry ★★★½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Found out the box was broken before watching this, so that made me sad and pissed.
Right, just got finished eating some raspberry ice cream, which was great thanks for asking, but i'm not here to review that I'm here to review the film Daniel Isn't Real. This was final film in my now completed little collection of independent horror films produced by the man himself Frodo Baggins.
Unlike the raspberry ice cream, which was pretty fire trucking good, this film was only unfortunately decent. I've wanted to check this film out for a while but never got round to doing so, but after skimming the synopsis in hmv it finally pulled me in. The concept seemed potentially fascinating if…
Review by MatiasP_ ★★½

No me pareció buena. Tiene partes entretenidas pero partes aburrida y en el todo hace que no me interese lo que esta pasando
Review by Inácio Netto ★★½

5 de 10 Estrelas
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
É um filme feito pro Nicholas Cage, mas que infelizmente não pôde ser estrelado por ele por ser um filme de adolescente.
Tem um conceito até legal, não muito novo mas executado de uma forma mais criativa.
Porém, todavia, entretanto, as atuações dos protagonistas são muito ruins, são dão uma melhorada no final porque é mais surtado, nos momentos mais contidos é bem "lendo texto" com cara de paisagem. O texto também é muito pretensioso o que deixa as cenas meio artificiais, com pouca naturalidade.
Vi que foi aclamado pela crítica, mas aqui não é Rotten Tomatoes, então só achei mediano.
Review by Andrés Romero ½

lo único bueno de la película es JPEGMAFIA de soundtrack
Review by em ★★½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

wanted to like this but spent the first half distracted by how miles robbins looks like cole sprouse and the second half thinking about how the daniel face looked like a rejected character from spy kids