By my reckoning the best sort of movie is one that takes you entirely by surprise.

The type of movie you go into not knowing a thing (or relatively little) about to discover a really awesome experience.

And that’s what Daniel Isn’t Real is.

The movie revolves around a young person, Luke (Miles Robbins, the son of Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins) who’s life is so traumatic that he creates an imaginary friend, Daniel (Patrick Schwarzenegger, the son of Arnold) to help him though his imaginary friend oftentimes seems to embody his meaner tendencies, which are made manifest when he encourages Luke to poison his mother.

It’s fascinating how movie establishes early on that Luke is a fairly passive individual, who internalizes things that bother him, causing him to create an avatar to deal with whatever he finds difficult.

In fact, it’s really done well character development that you don’t often see.

And that alone would be enough for most movies though Daniel Isn’t Real has a few more tricks running around it’s noggin.

I have a more detailed review below, though please watch the movie first before you watch my review because it’s really good and I’d hate to spoil a genuinely awesome movie for anyone (the review contains mild spoilers but you should go into it as fresh as possible).