Warning spoilers ahead for 2019 independent horror/fantasy/thriller Daniel Isn’t Real.
Considering I didn’t publish the last post I wrote, maybe the warning is pointless, maybe it is all pointless.
Anyway you’d think I’d someday watch enough horror movies about mental illness, but it hasn’t happened yet. Luke, our lead has a mother with Schizophrenia and is really validly worried that he also has it, since his imaginary friend is giving him command hallucinations. Command hallucinations are a feature of schizophrenia and some other psychotic disorders where your hallucinations (usually audio but sometimes visual) tell you to do things.
In the movie Daniel can take over Luke’s body. Anyway in turn Daniel gets so bad as to become a supernatural entity who kills people Luke loves until Luke kills himself so he can also kill Daniel, and there’s some really complex cosmology and supernatural stuff worthy of Hellraiser, House of Skin or any great horror novel.
I viewed it the first time more as a horror lover and with appreciation for the story as it is.
Yet not far into the second watch I noticed a pattern that really resonated with me, one that went back to undergrad; this looks a lot like what a self destructive spiral looks like. It’s dramatized, but if there is one thing the maladaptive part of the brain resists it is the ordered and protective. We see this demonic bit, which I find symbolic of the disordered part within us all and it seeks out magical thinking and superstitious thought, and rejects valuing anything apart from himself, he’s a complete hedonist to the destruction of anything else. A sadist too it turns out in the end.
The evil in this story doesn’t even seem that put out at being defeated, or at the threat of defeat. Which doesn’t make it seem like defeat. It is just an end. It makes you wonder what is going on with the mother at the beginning, because she seems just as tortured. It doesn’t seem like this evil is unique, or that there might not be others.
Also, a note on anti psychotics, they don’t work that fast. I think if he had taken them regularly, something might have happened. That therapist was an idiot to go alone to a clients house in the middle of the night. He would lose his licence, if he wasn’t dead, or at least need remedial training.
Anyway, I had a rough day, at least in one aspect that I was sent home for smelling bad. I couldn’t tell, and that kinda felt sucky. I’m about to take my second shower, and I double washed my clothes, as well as lighting an obscene number of candles and oh such deoderant……. I’m going overboard, because that’s who I am. They also complained about my beard and hair, so I’ve combed both plenty and washed, and will wash again….
I found a scrubber while I was cleaning the house, I did plenty of that too, because that can contribute.
Though, I guess there’s even yet another element; we all have different sides to ourselves, which we let dominate. We have a side that wants certain things, hedonistic and terrible things perhaps, and a more idealistic and moralistic side.