A visually engaging and brilliantly portrayed sure to be horror cult classic, Daniel Isn’t Real deals with themes of mental illness and personal demons with engrossing emotion and plenty of scares.

“The Devil made me do it!” It’s a line of defense uttered by many a twisted killer, from the “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez, to “Son of Sam” David Berkowitz. Many a madman has fallen prey to the voices in their heads, leaving a trail of blood in their wake.

Daniel Isn’t Real begins with a madman, no doubt plagued by his own demons, opening fire on unsuspecting patrons in a diner. Witnessing its bloody aftermath is eight-year-old Luke (Griffin Robert Fauklner). Not long after, he conjures up an imaginary friend named Daniel (Nathan Chandler Reid). They become the best of friends. They play pirate games and imagine diving out of an aeroplane. When Daniel convinces Luke to poison his mother (Mary Stuart Masterson), that’s when the fun stops and Daniel is banished...until years later when socially awkward college student Luke (Miles Robbins) brings Daniel (Patrick Schwarzenegger) back from exile and into a new world.

What follows is one of the best horror movies of 2019, a highly imaginative and stylish delve into madness and seduction, that takes known horror tropes and twists them into a unique and engrossing character driven movie. Based upon the novel ‘In This Way I Was Saved’ by Brian DeLeeuw, Daniel Isn’t Real marks director Adam Egypt standing as a talented genre filmmaker, who has created an imaginative and deeply felt story about a lonely young man whose need to connect conjures a confident confidant, who gives him a self-esteem shot that is intoxicating.

A cast of burgeoning young talent all deliver exceptional performances. Miles Robbins (son of Tim Robbins and Sudan Sarandon) inhabits Luke with a palpable anxiety and awkwardness, along with an intelligence and disarming sensitivity that makes him such an incredibly sympathetic character. Patrick Schwarzenegger (son of... well, you know) counters with a turn full of confidence and sex appeal, masking a dark undertow that when bubbles to the surface brings all kinds of hell with him.

The chemistry between Robbins and Schwarzenegger is electric, and helps lay stakes emotional, psychological, and physical, as the pair fight for control over the mind and body of a life with which all matter of damage can be dispensed. Mortimer has this tug-of-war play out against a backdrop where reality, fantasy, and worlds in between are presented with an imaginative and vibrant eye, and from which creative horror is presented. Perhaps the closest movie to compare it to is  the 1990 classic Jacob’s Ladder, and like that film there is no doubt that Daniel Isn’t Real is poised to become a classic of the horror genre.