Editorials
8 Films That Inspired Adam Egypt Mortimer’s ‘Daniel Isn’t Real’
Now in limited theaters and on VOD platforms everywhere is Adam Egypt Mortimer‘s must-see indie thriller Daniel Isn’t Real (review of the film), which Trace called “unique and terrifying” out of the SXSW World Premiere this past March.
In the film, a troubled college freshman (Miles Robbins) suffers a violent family trauma and resurrects his childhood imaginary friend (Patrick Schwarzenegger) to help him cope.
Bloody Disgusting caught up with Mortimer, who shares several movies that inspired his hallucinatory nightmare.
Jacob’s Ladder: “No movie better portrays the feeling of trauma than Jacob’s Ladder. It presents a recognizable feeling we all have in our more extreme moments when you wake up one day and the world is hell but somehow it is your hell. Any time in my life that something extraordinarily awful has happened I always think of Jacob’s Ladder. Adrian Lyne achieves the feeling of depersonalization that trauma creates while at the same time letting Robbins’ performance bring kinetic energy, life, and humor into the world so that there is always a contrast of feelings and a sense that we are never wallowing. Also, rad fucking demons, come on let’s be honest.”
Pink Floyd’s The Wall: “We tend to think of The Wall as a multimedia / musical project, but I love it as a movie. It’s the film that disturbed me the most as a kid and that feeling a being traumatized by a movie about trauma made a big impact on my approach to Daniel. Unlike some of the other movies that were inspirations, I didn’t watch or share The Wall in advance of shooting but I saw it on a big screen as soon as we wrapped and realized how much imagery from it had wormed its way into my brain and back out into my movie in the form of gnarly psychological meat worms. There’s a shot of Miles screaming into a cosmic brick wall that is an undeniable unconscious reference. The movie itself is structured around the inherent fascism of the self and visually presents the transformation from chaotic mania to controlled evil. There’s no question that you can watch Jacob’s Ladder and the Wall together as a brilliant double feature about past trauma and a living hell. In fact, they have the same production designer, Brian Morris, and his design in both films is a brilliant contribution to the vibe of darkness, decay, and energy.”
Bug: “Everything Friedkin does is my most important inspiration and Daniel clearly springs in many ways from The Exorcist. But Bug is my favorite Friedkin, as it is through his dynamic blocking and shooting strategies that he makes a movie of two or three people talking in a room relentlessly gripping. As an exploration of how one character’s mania can influence and absorb another character’s psyche, it is unparalleled — with the exception of Persona.”
Persona: “What you don’t realize before you see Persona for the first time is that it is punk as fuck. There’s so much energy, experimentalism, risk, dynamic visuals, and crazy choices in this 85-minute movie that you could study it forever and still find cool new things to rip off. The story of two characters in isolation going through love, hatred, insanity, transformation — is beautifully and shockingly filmed. This was one of the movies from which I ripped clips and made everyone in our crew watch. See if you can spot all the shots we put our own spin on.”
Raw: “One of the only movies from this decade that was a direct influence on Daniel, Julia Ducournau’s story about cannibal sisters in college crackles with life and truth while also presenting some truly gruesome and horrifying images. The choice of needle drops combined with the staging of the party sequences are some next level contemporary filmmaking.”
Watership Down: “This story about rabbit enduring their own apocalypse was the first movie that disturbed me when I watched it as a tiny child. The imagery of rabbits clawing their way through tunnels of blood, of the fascist rabbits who would tear off the ears of weaker dissidents, and of the black rabbit of death swimming through the sky — these would not ever leave my brain and kept me in nightmares for months. The combination of adorable animals and a severely brutal world is something that would haunt me forever. I can only ever hope to make something that has this level of traumatizing power.”
Requiem For A Dream: “A deepening spiral of very bad trouble that begins sweetly enough as a romance and becomes an almost unendurable descent into agony — Requiem is one of my favorites. This is another one that I shared with everyone involved and especially looked at it with Clark when we were discussing the soundtrack as a sonic experience that would thread relentlessly through the story, picking up in intensity and exposing the inner life of a mind breaking apart.”
Midnight Run: “This is my favorite movie of the 80s buddy crime comedy genre. The nonstop antagonism between Robert DeNiro and Charles Groden is one of the most captivating stories of male frenemyship. I don’t generally love these kinds of movies above all others but this particular one stuck with me ever since I saw it as a kid and I think there was some weird fragment of its DNA in Daniel.”
From child-eating witches to village-burning dragons, fairy tales have always had a foot in the horror genre. That’s why it makes sense that, for every The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia, there are also darker and more adult-oriented stories about magical worlds inhabited by ravenous monsters and cruel villains.
Funnily enough, these sinister tales were precisely the ones that I gravitated towards back when I was a kid, and I was reminded of this while watching Netflix’s recently released I Am Frankelda, Mexico’s first ever feature-length stop-motion animation and one hell of an entertaining parable about the intersection between fiction and reality.
In honor of this special kind of horror-adjacent fairy tale, today I’d like to share this list recommending six Dark Fantasy films that horror fans might enjoy.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be defining Dark Fantasy as fantastical stories that don’t shy away from the more macabre elements that fuel classic fairy tales. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own grim favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
I’m fascinated by bizarre attempts at blockbuster filmmaking – especially when the resulting movies are somehow still fun despite their corporate-mandated origins. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is precisely one of these strangely compelling studio projects, as this surprisingly successful action-thriller boasts a lot of heart (and tongue-in-cheek humor) for a CGI-heavy creature feature.
Directed by Dead Snow’s Tommy Wirkola, Witch Hunters re-frames the classic fairy tale as an origin story for a duo of badass monster-slayers. Of course, it’s the flick’s anachronistic aesthetic and overall visual flair that make it stand out from other action-horror endeavors from around the same time.
5. The Wolf House (2018)
Made in the tradition of faux cursed films in the same vein as Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made, the eerie backstory to 2018’s Chilean animated flick The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo in the original Spanish) already makes it a nightmarish experience before the flick even really begins.
After all, the movie is presented to us as a faux propaganda film produced by the leader of a death cult (heavily inspired by the real life Colonia Dignidad), with this hybrid animated feature using complex movie magic to simulate a single uninterrupted shot as it tells the story of a lazy young girl who runs away from an isolated colony and encounters a creepy old house in the woods.
4. The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Out of all the Monty Python alumni, Terry Gilliam has had the most interesting career outside of the original comedy group. From fascinating canceled projects (such as his scrapped adaptation of Watchmen) to dystopian parodies that feel more relevant by the minute (1985’s Brazil), even his “lesser” films are still intriguing in their own way.
2005’s The Brothers Grimm is one such project, with this peculiar movie attempting to combine the comedian-turned-filmmaker’s unique visual style with a more blockbuster-oriented plot reimagining the titular brothers as con-artists rather than mere writers. The end result isn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it’s still a legitimately fun ride with plenty of memorable monsters and wonderful performances by both the late, great Heath Ledger and Matt Damon.
3. Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010)
2010’s Dante’s Inferno game may have a reputation as something of an unapologetic God of War clone, but I’d argue that the now-obscure game was aesthetically unique enough to deserve a bigger fanbase. However, while the title remains trapped on the seventh console generation, its highly underrated anime adaptation is a lot easier to get a hold of!
Animated by 6 different studios in order to make the 9 circles of hell feel unique from each other, this may not be a completely faithful adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s poem, but it’s still one heck of a great (not to mention gory) time that I’d highly recommend to fans of Netflix’s take on Castlevania.
2. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)
My personal favorite entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lycans, is a highly ambitious prequel that actually works better if you haven’t had the story spoiled to you by the previous Underworld films.
While the rest of the series features plenty of urban fantasy elements as the movies combine machine guns and modern environments with gothic storytelling, Patrick Tatopoulos’ prequel fully embraces its fantastical origins and tells a classic tale about a doomed romance between a werewolf and a vampire amid a medieval uprising.
And the best part is that we get a lot more Michael Sheen as the fan-favorite Lucian.
1. Solomon Kane (2011)
One of my personal favorite movies on this list, MJ Basset’s criminally underseen adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s other iconic warrior is thoroughly steeped in horror ambience and features plenty of memorable monsters. However, it’s also a classic origin story for a swashbuckling hero that wouldn’t feel out of place in a tabletop RPG.
While I’ve already written about how the film deftly combines both horror and fantasy elements without breaking the bank, I’ll never pass up an opportunity to recommend the bizarre movie where James Purefoy expertly plays a puritan John Wick.
It’s just too bad that we never got the other films in this intended trilogy.
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