Daniel Isn't Real

By: Amos Lassen

"DANIEL ISN'T REAL"
A Homoerotic Fantasy
Amos Lassen

Director/writer Adam Egypt Mortimer's "Daniel Isn't Real" is a dark story that attempts to help the viewer better understand mental health issues and a personal demon. It's a psychological horror that is slickly directed and written based on the 2009 novel In "The Way I Was Saved" by Brian DeLeeuw, who is also the co-writer.
The film opens with a bloody mass shooting at a diner. That is witnessed by the 8-year-old Luke (played as a kid by Griffin Robert Faulkner), who finds himself taken to a nearby park from the horrific crime scene by an imaginary friend Daniel (Nathan Reid). Luke is a lonely rich boy, whose parents constantly fight. Luke is helped at home by the imaginary friend and they become playmates and seem happy together. Luke's mentally challenged mother Claire (Mary Stuart Masterson) looks on and is glad Luke is happy playing with an imaginary friend.

Then Luke's mother believes the imaginary friend got her son to poison her drink so she places him in the dollhouse and forbids him to play with her son.
We then see Luke as a young adult; a freshman attending a boarding college who has adjustment problems at school. (He's now played by Miles Robbins). At a student party he has a seizure. The sinister Daniel (now played by Patrick Schwarzenegger) uses this opportunity to re-enter his friend's life and helps Luke relate to the coeds. He gets Luke to assert himself with his roommates and to use . When Luke falls for the free-spirited artist Cassie (Sasha Lane), Daniel takes over Luke's body and makes it with his girl.

From this point on, things become really strange and Luke descends into uncontrollable madness. He has far-out hallucinations while Daniel completely takes over his body by crawling inside him. Luke goes to a therapist (Chukwudi Iwuji) for help and is who advised to confront his demon. Here begins Luke's battle with Daniel, the demon in him and fights for his sanity. Luke battles his alter ego for control.
Director Mortimer's repeated use of unmotivated visual symbols-spirals will reappear at significant moments-adds an art-film aura to this familiar story of masculinity on the verge of violent disintegration. This abstract symbolism, along with the use of oversaturated colors and visions of bodily transmogrification, makes the film feel as if it is part of the genre of psychological horror.
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As the title tells us, Daniel isn't real. Luke's mother refers to him as an "imaginary friend," but viewers guess from the moment Daniel appears on screen, that there may be more to him. Repressed for much of Luke's life-shut away, semi-metaphorically, in Claire's dollhouse. Luke grows into an aspiring photographer beset by his mother's declining mental health, and his rediscovered ego-ideal represents a violent personality he both represses and desires.
The queer subtext here is unmistakable, particularly when Daniel helps Luke cheat on a physics exam by stripping nude to reveal the answers written on his body. Daniel is seen as an evil and pernicious influence on the straight boy that DeLeeuw and Mortimer don't let us forget that Luke is. They conjure up a female love interest to serve as a hinge in the plot, a reason for Luke to reject Daniel's excessive masculinity. Cassie and her bad-girl foil, Sophie (Hannah Marks), are there to defuse the homoerotic tension between Luke and his fantasy man.
Luke's only defining characteristic is his struggle with his inner demon. Daniel, too, is a broadly sketched version of an inner demon. Schwarzenegger plays Daniel as a vain demon, the devil on Luke's shoulder that is either a manifestation of Luke's inherited tendency toward schizophrenia or an actual demon, often compelling Luke to make the kind of bad decisions that college undergraduates might make anyway. In the end, the simplistic association of and sex with Daniel's accompanying love of violence and murder betrays the conventional morality that is behind the film's extreme imagery.
Lyle Vincent's cinematography is colorful yet dark, and the compositions of his shots create real menace right from the first scene. There are some extraordinary practical effects and strong direction from Mortimer that make this an interesting film that should be seen if only for enjoyment of something different.