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Hidden Horrors: The Psychological Fury of Daniel Isn't Real
This week, we're taking a look at an imaginary friend horror story with serious bite.
Welcome to Hidden Horrors of Peacock, a monthly column spotlighting off-the-beaten-path scary movies available to watch right now on NBCUniversal's streaming service. From cult classics to forgotten sequels to indie gems you've maybe never heard of, we've got you covered.
The imaginary friend is a potent allegory in fiction, especially horror fiction. There's a reason we've seen the idea of imagined personalities used over and over again in scary stories ranging from the work of Henry James to William Peter Blatty to Stephen King.
An imaginary friend can easily represent a dark component of a character's own personality (as in The Dark Half) or something more sinister and separate, an invasive force hellbent on destruction (as in The Exorcist). It's a great metaphor that, when wielded for horror, can do some very gruesome, very intimate things that remind us all of the darkness we each possess, the little voice in the back of our minds just itching to come out and wreak havoc. We even got a new installment in the subgenre with Blumhouse's Imaginary earlier this year.
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Why Now Is a Great Time to Revisit Daniel Isn't Real on Peacock
For one of the best examples of imaginary friend horror ever produced, we need look no further than the Peacock streaming service, where the horror section holds a 2019 film called Daniel Isn't Real. As the title suggests, it's the story of a person who must grapple with the reality (or unreality) or their own imaginary friend, with disastrous and violent consequences. The result is one of the best movies of its kind, and an underseen gem from the last five years that you really should have on your radar.
The Daniel of the title, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger, is the imaginary friend of a troubled young man named Luke (Miles Robbins), who seemingly dreamed Daniel up out of nowhere after witnessing a violent event near his home as a boy. When Daniel's pranks and tendencies toward destruction get to be too much, Luke's mentally ill mother (Mary Stuart Masterson) suggests that he lock Daniel away in an antique dollhouse, seemingly ending his reign of terror over the family.
Cut to years later, and a fresh bout of illness for his mother has Luke reeling. He's struggling to maintain a direction at school, his home life is rough, and he doesn't seem to have much energy in terms of seizing a sense of destiny. That's when Daniel emerges again, setting Luke on a path that seemingly holds promise... at least until Daniel starts to take over more and more.
Adapted by writer/director Adam Egypt Mortimer from Brian DeLeeuw's (who also co-wrote the screenplay) novel, In This Way I Was Saved, Daniel Isn't Real begins by establishing a haunting, uncomfortable baseline for Luke's life, then ratcheting up the tension through the appearance of Daniel. Played with smirking bravado by Schwarzenegger, Daniel isn't exactly a surprising imaginary friend given the vibe of the story. He's got a sinister air from the beginning, and it's easy to see his efforts to push Luke out of his comfort zone turning sinister. You can follow the rhythms of this weird, destructive, codependent relationship quite clearly, especially as Luke begins a romance with a young artist named Cassie (Sasha Lane) which threatens Daniel's hold on him.
But then, things get stranger, and darker, and more gruesome, and Daniel Isn't Real rises with confidence and bite to become its own kind of imaginary friend story. Even if you understand innately that there's more to Daniel than a simple case of an imagination gone too far, you're not prepared for the ways in which this film is able to twist its own inner mythos to dark new ends. The visual effects, including creature designs by Martin Astles, push the film from psychological gripping to full-on nightmarish, giving Daniel and Luke's story an edge that sets it apart and allows it to build to a particularly compelling crescendo. It's brutal, and it never loses that seat-of-your-pants impishness that makes it fun to watch.
So, if you're looking for a new piece of imaginary friend horror to work through, check out Daniel Isn't Real on Peacock.
