Critic Reviews

It’s thoroughly engrossing, entertaining, and a lot of fun from beginning to end.

Although it eventually settles into familiar genre tropes, for much of its running time Daniel Isn't Real proves a genuinely provocative shocker.

Daniel Isn’t Real is exploitation that eschews the trashier elements of the genre. As a director, Mortimer frames a great shot and pulls gangbusters performances out of Robbins and Schwarzenegger. It’s minded, but also massively entertaining genre cinema.

A slick and thrilling take on the intersection of mental illness and creative inspiration that also doubles as a commentary on toxic masculinity.

What starts as a mediocre psychological thriller finishes as a surprisingly toothsome and creative horror film, complete with creature features and journeys into the abyss.

In supporting roles of varying importance, Masterson, Sasha Lane and Hannah Marks do enough to suggest the film would have been better off giving them more. But Daniel Isn’t Real remains a two-man show, and Robbins and Schwarzenegger are an odd couple worth believing in.

It’s full of plot holes but compulsively watchable for the first hour, before the whole thing falls to pieces as Mortimer chucks in a load of well-worn horror-movie tropes.

Mortimer builds Daniel Isn’t Real to a conclusion that, in concept, should be both tragic and terrifying. Here, it just feels perfunctory.

The best thing I can say about Daniel Isn’t Real is that it’s a promising early feature made by young artists who haven’t yet worked out how to express and/or synthesize what they like about their favorite artists and their work. It’s all style and very little substance.

Dull and often exploitative, Daniel Isn’t Real coasts on the familiar faces of its lead actors while wasting their potential.