Daniel Isn't Real

Daniel Isn't Real (2019) is an American psychological horror film directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer that you can watch online on iFILM. As a child, Luke had an imaginary friend named Daniel — charming, bold, and entirely invisible to everyone else. His mother made him lock Daniel away. It worked, more or less, for about fifteen years.

Now Luke is a college freshman dealing with anxiety and a mother deteriorating in a psychiatric facility. His therapist suggests re-engaging with the childhood construct as a coping tool. Daniel comes back fully formed: confident, socially fluent, eager to help. Miles Robbins plays Luke with a convincing fragility, while Patrick Schwarzenegger makes Daniel just likeable enough that the dynamic reads as envy before it reads as danger. Mary Stuart Masterson and Sasha Lane appear in key supporting roles.

Mortimer — who later directed Faceless After Dark — frames mental illness and possession as the same process viewed from different angles, which gives the film an unsettling ambiguity most straightforward haunting narratives skip. It's too weird for mainstream horror and too visceral for pure art-house — the gap between those two modes is exactly where it operates. Stream Daniel Isn't Real online on iFILM.