Comments on: Explaining the Movie Daniel Isn’t Real

By: Con

Con — Sat, 17 Oct 2020 06:28:39 +0000

Drop Dead Fred…

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 14:02:15 +0000

He could just be using Cassie because she’s the only one available at the moment until he finds a more willing target but I think he picks his victims by their mental illness.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 13:56:18 +0000

Agreed, the performances were good but I also wondered about the dollhouse because it was never explained fully how one could imprison the demon at will. And now that Luke is out of the picture, what happens? Maybe the dollhouse could be any structure used to imprison the demon if the person is strong enough to believe it will? I also agree the writers seemed to be steering clear of “demonizing” mental illness with this one by steering away from it as the explanation in the end.

By: Damon

Damon — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 05:18:16 +0000

I thought it was about a demon soon as child Luke laid eyes on the dead body and then the random kid popped up. I don’t know why thats where my mind immediately took me, but it did. What made me start to change my mind was his mother suffering from mental illness. I wonder how that plays into this thing as a whole if its specifically about a demon. Maybe i’m looking too much into it which i usually do but what about how he looks, if we are to believe he just jumps form person to person, he takes on the same look every time based on the first guy’s drawings but he has the ability to change his appearance if he chooses to since he came to Luke initially as a child and in a sense grew up with him despite being locked away, but how do you “lock away” being possessed?. Also, wouldn’t Cassie now knowing his name and his signature look make her a bad selection as his next target or is it that they don’t have a choice in the matter? He kinda got “invited in” by child Luke, whereas she is an adult and knows what it is.

By: deKev

deKev — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 12:32:31 +0000

Yes, agreed with Lisa that Daniel has got to be a real life demon who specializes in feeding on the mental illnesses of its victims and leading them astray. I also think the demon gets stronger when its victim gets er… crazier. I remember Luke as a kid was able to banish Daniel into the dollhouse and kept it under lock, figuratively and literally. One possible reason for that is that young Luke was not so “crazy” then and consequently the demon was not strong enough to resist Luke’s banishment.

Now my question, does anyone have any idea what’s up with the granny’s dollhouse then? There’s zero background on it and yet it works like a MacGuffin (or is it a Checkov’s Gun) that features prominently in the final act.

The movie is quite ok for me, not too groundbreaking or memorable, plotwise. Perhaps the filmmakers just wanted to dodge the bullet of shaming mental illnesses, and so decided to go with a demon for explaining the imaginary friend. I just wished the imaginary friend could have used some other more out-there explanations, like an entity made real, that’s literally, physically real, a manifestation of and by a person’s psychotic disorder.

OTOH, the visual effects are excellent for a small budget film and IMHO performances are very good too, especially that of Miles Robbins, who I could’ve sworn is related to Casey Affleck, and not Tim Robbins, haha.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:32:32 +0000

I just watched this last night and I would tend to agree that the movie is about an actual demon regardless of the way the movie tries to paint it otherwise in the beginning. We see his true face in the drawings and in the dollhouse. He seems to feed on broken people who would be easily manipulated such as Luke and the boy previous who committed the murders. Luke thought he was getting rid of him but in reality he just set him free to inhabit someone else. As Cassie also seems a bit broken I can see her being a prime next host.